HUGH  A. 
CLARKEr. 


.<^&>^ 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT 


yr 


Highways  and  Byways 
of  Music 

By 

Hugh  A.  Clarke,  Mus.  Doc. 

Professor  of  the  Science  of  Music,  University  of  Penn- 
sylvania ;  Author  of  "  Music  and  the  Comrade 
Arts,"  "  The  Elements  of  Vocal  Harmony,"  etc. 


Silver,  Burdett  and  Company 

New  York       Boston       Chicago 


Copyright,  igoi, 

KY 

Silver,  Burdett  and  Company 


Music  Library 

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GO 
66^ 


PREFACE. 

The  material  of  this  coilectio?i  of  essays  is 
drawn  from  lectures  on  musical  topics  delivered 
on  various  occasions.  In  the  essay  ofi  ' '  Myths  ' ' 
the  universality  of  certain  striking  coincidences 
is  pointed  out,  and  an  arg7t?tient  for  the  great 
antiquity  of  the  Art  is  draum.  That  on 
' '  Facts  ' '  is  designed  as  a  peridant  to  the  preced- 
ing one.  ' '  Literary  Men  and  Music  "  is  a 
plea  for  the  fuller  recognition,  on  the  part 
of  literary  men  that  Music  as  a  "  great  art ' ' 
is  of  equal  rank  with  her  sister  arts. 

In  "  The  Teutonic  Element  in  Music"  an 
endeavor  is  made  to  substitute  for  the  theory, 
advocated  by  many,  that  ' '  Art  Music ' '  is  an  out- 


Preface. 

growth  of  Folk- so  tig,  the  theory  that  the  Folk-song 
is  simply  an  indication  of  racial  temperament 
out  of  which  ''''Art  Music'"  may  or  may  not 
grow,  and  that  the  German  branch  alone,  of 
the  great  Teutonic  family,  was  possessed  of  the 
requisite  temperamental  cotiditiotis  for  this 
growth. 

In  ' '  Curiosities  of  Musical  History ' '  the 
object  is  to  exhibit  the  strong  contrasts  between 
the  ancient  and  the  modern  ways  of  viewifig  the 
Art.  In  ''''Modern  Tendencies,''  at  the  risk  of 
being  classed  among  the  "  laudatores  tempori 
acti, "  the  Author  has  attetnpted  to  strike  a 
balance  between  the  losses  and  gains  of  the  Art, 
since  the  first  quarter  of  the  cetitury  just  ended. 

H.  A.  CLARKE. 

Philadelphia,  Pa., 
April  2^,  1901. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER 

I.  Some  Musical  Myths 

II.  Some  Facts  in  the  Growth  of 
Music 

III.  Literary  Men  and  Music 

IV.  Some    Curiosities    of     Musical 

History      .         ,         .         .         . 

V.  The      Teutonic      Element      in 
Music  ..... 


PAGE 
I 


30 
78 


VI.  Modern  Tendencies  in  Music  .     125 


Highways  and   Byways 
of  Music. 


I. 


SOME    MUSICAL   MYTHS. 

A  STRIKING  proof  of  the  great  an- 
tiquity of  music  may  be  found  in 
the  fact  that  so  many  myths  have  grown 
up  concerning  its  origin.  That  it  has 
always  been  held  in  the  highest  estima- 
tion is  proved  by  the  fact  that  its  in- 
vention or  discovery  has  always  been 
attributed  to  some  beneficent  divinity  or 
sage.      Many    of    the    oldest    and    most 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

widespread  myths  cluster  around  that 
humblest  of  all  musical  instruments,  the 
drum,  and  its  still  humbler  relatives, 
the  clapper  and  rattle.  An  early  Greek 
myth  credits  Rhea,  the  mother  of  the 
gods,  with  the  invention  of  the  drum,  for 
the  purpose  of  amusing  the  infant  Jupiter. 
A  Latin  myth  tells  us  that  the  first 
musical  sounds  heard  in  the  world  were 
the  strokes  of  the  hammer  on  the  anvil. 
This  must  be  a  rather  late  myth,  since  it 
ignores  the  ages  of  stone  and  bronze  that 
preceded  the  iron  age.  It  also  sounds 
like  an  echo  of  the  Biblical  story  of  the 
invention  of  music  by  Jubal,  the  son  of 
Tubal  Cain,  the  first  blacksmith,  and  of 
that  other  story  of  Pythagoras's  discovery 
of  the  consonances  by  listening  to  the 
sounds  made  on  the  anvil  by  hammers  of 
different  weights. 

There    are    many    varieties    of    myths, 
and  the  different  varieties  shade  off  into 
a 


Some  Musical  Myths. 

each  other  in  so  many  ways  that  classifi- 
cation is  very  difficult,  if  not  impossible. 
We  are  apt  to  make  the  mistake  of  credit- 
ing them  to  the  poetic  insight  of  their 
inventors,  but  it  is  now  generally  ad- 
mitted that  in  their  earliest,  crudest  forms 
they  are  nothing  but  ignorant  attempts 
to  explain  natural  phenomena  in  terms 
that  to  the  savage  mind  are  flatly  prosaic. 
To  our  apprehension  it  sounds  imagina- 
tive and  poetical  to  describe  the  retreat 
of  darkness  before  the  sun  as  the  death  of 
Typhon,  struck  through  by  the  arrows  of 
"  far-darting  Apollo,"  but  to  the  inven- 
tors of  the  myth  it  was  a  literal  explana- 
tion of  the  fact.  In  South  America  there 
is  a  tribe  of  Indians  who  have  a  drum 
god,  who  speaks  to  them  in  the  sound  of 
the  drum. 

To    the    simple    mind    of    the    savage, 
everything,  animate  and  inanimate,  pos- 
sesses a  spirit  and  volition  like  his  own ; 
3 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

it  is  his  theory  of  natural  phenomena. 
Therefore,  when  he  beats  his  drum  and 
says  that  its  spirit  speaks  to  him,  he  is 
not  poetizing  but  giving  what  to  him  is  a 
scientific  explanation  of  the  fact.  When, 
after  the  lapse  of  time,  the  meaning  of 
this  original  explanation  has  been  forgot- 
ten, or  a  new  explanation  of  the  phenom- 
enon has  been  grafted  on  the  old,  and  an 
attempt  is  made  to  explain  the  old  myth, 
the  conscious  stage  of  myth-making  be- 
gins. Thus  the  myth  in  which  this  same 
tribe  describes  the  invention  of  the  drum 
evidently  originated  in  a  later  age,  when 
the  facts  had  been  forgotten. 

According  to  this  story,  Arawanili,  a 
great  chief  of  the  olden  time, — somewhat 
like  Hiawatha, — was  walking  one  day  by 
the  river-side,  pondering  sorrowfully  on 
the  ills  and  afflictions  of  mankind,  when 
a  beautiful  nymph  arose  from  the  river, 
and  giving  him  a  small  branch  which  she 

4 


Some  Musical  Myths. 

carried,  told  him  to  plant  it  and  after- 
wards gather  the  fruit.  He  did  so,  and 
the  fruit  turned  out  to  be  a  large  gourd, 
and  from  this  gourd  they  make  the  drum 
called  the  maraca.  Although  the  myth 
stops  here,  the  presumption  is  that  all 
the  evils  about  which  Arawanili  was 
pondering  so  sadly  vanished  at  the  first 
beat  of  the  drum,  and  mankind  lived 
happily  ever  after, 

A  myth  of  this  kind  is  much  more  than 
an  attempt  to  explain  a  fact ;  it  tries  to 
give  a  circumstantial  account  of  how  this 
fact  came  into  existence. 

It  is  quite  possible  that  Arawanili  may 
have  been  a  real  person,  a  man  of  mark 
in  his  day,  and  the  invention  of  the  drum 
has  been  credited  to  him  in  virtue  of  that 
strong  tendency,  not  yet  extinct  by  any 
means,  that  makes  mankind  exalt  their 
heroes  by  fathering  on  them  all  unclaimed 
waifs  and  strays  of  discovery  and  inven- 
5 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

tion,  just  as  Guido  of  Arezzo  has  been 
credited  with  every  musical  discovery  or 
invention  that  existed  in  the  eleventh 
century. 

There  is  a  third  class  of  myths,  namely, 
those  which  are  invented  long  after,  when 
the  force  and  meaning  of  the  original 
myths  have  been  entirely  forgotten,  but 
having  been  inherited  as  part  of  the  an- 
cestral belief,  poets  and  philosophers  at- 
tempt to  "spiritualize"  them.  The 
Greeks  were  the  great  authors  of  myths 
of  this  class,  and  their  genius  has  woven 
around  them  some  of  the  loftiest  and  also 
some  of  the  worst  teachings  the  world 
possesses. 

In  the  consideration  of  myths  it  is 
necessary  to  keep  these  distinctions 
always  in  mind,  although  it  is  never  pos- 
sible to  say  with  exactness  just  how  much 
of  the  story  belongs  to  one  or  to  the 
other  class.  The  incongruous  mixture  of 
6 


Some  Musical  Myths. 

dissimilar  subjects  found  in  many  myths 
is  an  evidence  that  several  older  myths 
have  been  fused  together  into  one. 
Thus,  in  a  drum  myth  of  some  North 
American  Indians,  when  the  waters  of 
the  deluge  began  to  subside  they  were 
divided  into  four  quarters  and  were 
swallowed  by  four  huge  tortoises;  and 
the  tortoises  were  of  use,  not  only  as 
great  reservoirs,  but  as  great  drums,  be- 
cause the  first  men  beat  on  their  backs 
with  drumsticks.  Music  and  cosmogony 
seem  to  have  gotten  into  an  inextricable 
tangle  in  this  story.  Its  crudeness  is 
proof  of  its  great  antiquity,  whereas  in 
the  following  myth  we  have  an  example 
of  the  third  class,  in  which  conscious 
poetic  invention  is  displayed.  There 
were  twelve  celestial  maidens  who  came 
down  to  the  earth  every  day  to  dance  in 
a  magic  ring,  accompanying  themselves 
on  small  drums.  They  were  watched 
7 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

one  day  by  a  young  hunter,  White 
Hawk,  who  was  rewarded  by  hearing  the 
most  ravishing  music  that  mortal  ears 
had  ever  heard. 

One  very  curious  fact  is  to  be  noted  in 
many  of  the  musical  myths  coming  from 
widely  separated  parts  of  the  world, 
namely,  that  there  is  always  some  con- 
nection between  music  and  water.  In  the 
first  myth  related  it  was  a  water  nymph 
who  taught  Arawanili  the  use  of  the 
drum ;  in  the  other  the  tortoises  that 
were  used  as  the  first  drums  were  also  the 
reservoirs  for  the  waters  of  the  deluge. 

In  India,  Sarasvati,  the  wife  of  Brahma, 
is  the  inventor  of  music,  and  also  the 
goddess  of  streams.  Again,  in  the 
Egyptian  myth  of  the  invention  of  music 
the  same  conjunction  appears:  Thoth 
(the  Egyptian  Mercury),  walking  one 
day  on  the  banks  of  the  Nile,  chanced  to 
strike  with  his  foot  the  shell  of  a  tortoise 


Some  Musical  Myths. 

which  lay  drying  in  the  sun  and  wind. 
Some  of  the  ligaments  of  the  tortoise 
were  still  attached  to  the  shell,  drawn 
tight  by  the  heat,  and  they  gave  forth  a 
musical  sound  when  struck  by  the  foot  of 
the  god.  He,  being  of  an  observant  turn 
of  mind,  picked  up  the  shell  and  twanged 
the  ligaments  with  his  finger,  and  the 
lyre  was  invented.  The  Greeks  borrowed 
this  story  from  the  Egyptians  and  im- 
proved on  it.  According  to  their  version, 
Hermes,  the  wind  god,  who  was  born  in 
the  morning  one  beautiful  day  in  May, 
was  so  precocious  a  child  that  by  the 
middle  of  the  day  he  was  out  taking  a 
walk.  When  he  found  a  tortoise  he  cap- 
tured it  and  made  a  lyre  out  of  its  shell, 
and  at  once  began  to  play  most  ravish- 
ingly.  It  is  rather  curious  that  the  tor- 
toise should  appear  in  two  musical  myths 
coming  from  places  so  widely  separated 
as  Egypt  and  South  America. 
9 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

One  of  the  most  beautiful  of  the  musi- 
cal myths  of  the  imaginative  poetic  class, 
is  the  Greek  story  of  the  descent  of 
Orpheus  to  the  lower  regions  to  persuade 
Pluto  to  restore  his  dead  wife  Euridice. 
So  great  was  his  skill  on  the  lyre  that,  in 
Dryden's  words,  he  "  drew  iron  tears 
down  Pluto's  cheek,"  and  the  gloomy 
monarch  consented  to  let  Euridice  return 
from  the  under  world  to  the  earth.  One 
condition  was  exacted :  Orpheus,  while 
pursuing  the  long,  toilsome  journey  to 
the  upper  world,  was  straitly  charged  not 
to  look  behind  him  at  the  painfully- 
following  Euridice,  He  had  almost 
reached  the  sunlit  world  when,  filled  with 
longing  to  see  his  beloved  Euridice,  he 
turned,  and  with  a  sad  cry  she  vanished 
forever  from  his  sight. 

In  the  myths  concerning  the  invention 
of  pipes  or  flutes,  both  water  and  wind 
play  a  large  part.     The  "  great  god  Pan  " 


Some  Musical  Myths. 

was  enamored  of  the  nymph  Syrinx,  who 
fled  from  him,  and  taking  refuge  in  the 
river  was  changed  into  a  reed.  Pan 
rushed  after  her,  and  as  he  threw  his  arms 
about  the  clump  of  reeds  in  which  she 
had  taken  refuge,  a  gust  of  wind  blew 
through  them  making  a  beautiful  sound; 
he  was  so  charmed  with  it  that  he  cut  the 
reeds  and  fashioned  them  into  that  oldest 
and  most  universal  of  musical  instru- 
ments, the  pandean  pipe  or  syrinx.  This 
myth  has  been  exquisitely  done  in  verse 
by  Mrs.  Browning  with  the  omission  of 
that  part  relating  to  the  nymph. 

The  Chinese  have  a  very  circumstantial 
account  of  the  invention  of  the  pipe.  In 
the  reign  of  the  Emperor  Hoang-ti,  there 
lived  a  great  musician,  Ling-lun.  Al- 
though music  had  been  bestowed  on  the 
Flowery  Kingdom  many  years  before  by 
a  goddess,  it  was  as  yet  nothing  but  a 
confused  mass  of  sounds  without  order  or 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

system;  so  Hoang-ti  commanded  Ling- 
lun  to  arrange  the  musical  sounds  in  some 
regular  system.  How  to  accomplish  this 
troubled  Ling-lun  sorely ;  so  he  wandered 
off  in  deep  thought  to  the  land  where  the 
bamboo  grows.  Taking  one  of  these 
canes,  he  cut  it  off  between  the  knots, 
pressed  out  the  pith  and  blew  into  it, 
when  it  gave  a  beautiful  sound.  It  hap- 
pened that  this  sound  was  exactly  that  of 
his  own  voice  when  he  spoke,  and  also 
that  made  by  the  murmur  of  the  waters 
of  the  river  Hoang-ho,  which  ran  near 
by.  "  Behold!"  he  cried,  "  this  is  the 
fundamental  sound  of  nature,  from  which 
all  other  sounds  must  be  derived."  Just 
then  the  magic  bird  called  Foung-hoang 
settled,  with  his  mate,  on  a  tree  near  by 
and  began  to  sing;  to  Ling's  delight,  its 
first  note  was  that  of  the  pipe  he  had 
just  made.  Then  all  the  winds  were 
hushed,    and    all   the  birds  in  the  world 


Some  Musical  Myths. 

ceased  singing,  that  they  might  listen  to 
the  magic  bird  and  his  mate.  As  they 
sang,  Ling-lun  kept  cutting  off  bamboos 
and  tuning  them  to  the  notes  of  their 
songs,  six  to  the  notes  of  the  male,  six  to 
the  notes  of  the  female.  When  he  had 
finished  he  bound  the  canes  together  and 
took  them  to  the  Emperor  ;  they  be- 
came the  standard  scale  of  China  to  this 
day. 

Leaving  out  the  mythological  part  of 
this  story,  it  probably  embodies  the  dis- 
covery of  some  reformer  of  the  scale. 
Chinese  vocal  music  is  founded  on  the 
pentatonic  scale, — the  notes  of  the  male 
bird.  Their  instrumental  music  is 
founded  on  the  chromatic  scale, — a  union 
of  the  notes  of  the  male  and  female  birds. 
In  this  story  the  water  and  the  reeds 
again  make  their  appearance,  but  the 
only  part  assigned  lo  the  wind  is  total 
silence. 

13 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

Nareda,  the  inventor  of  the  vina, — a 
kind  of  lyre  pecuHar  to  India, —  was 
called  the  "  giver  of  water,"  and  his 
first  instrument  was  made  of  the  shell  of 
a  tortoise.  In  many  of  the  feats  ascribed 
to  him  he  resembles  the  Hermes  of 
Greek,  and  Thoth  of  Egyptian  mythol- 
ogy. The  persistence  with  which  wind, 
water,  and  tortoise  reappear  in  the  myths 
of  widely-separated  peoples  is  a  strong 
argument  for  the  community  of  origin  of 
the  human  family;  but  any  attempt  to 
account  for  the  existence  of  these  myths 
is  necessarily  very  uncertain.  Some 
students  of  mythology  incline  to  the 
opinion  that  the  drum,  or  back  of  the 
tortoise,  is  the  symbol  of  the  sky, — 
the  water-carrier;  and  that  the  wind 
(Hermes-Thoth-Nareda),  is  the  player, 
and  that  there  was  a  time  when  to  say, 
"  Hermes  sounds  the  lyre"  or"  Nareda 
beats  the  drum,"  meant  exactly  what  we 
14 


Some  Musical  Myths. 

mean  when  we  say  "  the  wind  blows  "  or 
it  thunders";  and  these  phrases  were 
not  a  whit  more  poetical  to  the  people 
who  used  them  than  "  it  rains  "  or  "  it 
blows  "  are  to  us. 

From  a  very  early  period  the  flute  was 
rcf^Mrded  as  an  inferior  instrument  to  the 
lyre.  This  superiority  of  the  lyre,  and 
also  the  fact  that  the  flute  was  the  earlier 
invention,  is  illustrated  in  several  myths. 
According  to  one  Greek  story,  Minerva 
used  to  play  the  flute,  but  threw  it  away 
because  Juno  laughed  at  the  faces  she 
made  when  playing,  and  took  to  the  lyre 
instead.  The  shepherd  Marsyas  found 
tlie  flute  she  threw  away,  and  became 
such  a  virtuoso  on  it  that  he  challenged 
Apollo  to  a  trial  of  skill.  Apollo,  when  a 
shepherd  keeping  the  flocks  of  Admetus, 
had  also  played  the  flute,  and  he,  too,  had 
discarded  it  for  the  lyre.  The  nine  Muses 
were  chosen  as  a  jury.     As  a  matter  of 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

course  Apollo  was  victorious,  and  he  was 
ungenerous  enough  to  revenge  himself 
on  his  adversary  for  challenging  him  by 
skinning  him.  Perhaps  this  is  only  a 
mythical  way  of  setting  forth  the  fate 
meted  out  to  a  defeated  candidate  by 
the  musical  critics  of  the  time. 

Plutarch  tells  a  story  that  illustrates 
this  disparaging  opinion  of  the  flute. 
Antisthenes,  to  whom  some  one  spoke 
in  high  terms  of  the  performance  of  the 
flute-player,  Ismenias,  replied  :  "  He  must 
be  but  a  wretched  human  being,  other- 
wise he  could  not  be  so  excellent  a 
piper." 

The  old  myths  all  tell  strange  stories 
of  the  wonderful  power  of  music.  Or- 
pheus tamed  wild  animals  and  "  made 
the  mountain-tops  that  freeze  "  bow 
themselves  to  listen  to  his  lyre.  Amphion 
built  the  walls  of  Thebes  by  compelling 
the  stones  to  range  themselves  in  order 
i6 


Some  Musical  Myths. 

at  the  sound  of  his  music.  Arion,  who 
failed  to  charm  the  sailors,  so  charmed  a 
dolphin  by  his  lyre  that  when  the  sailors 
threw  him  overboard  the  dolphin  carried 
him  safely  to  the  shore. 

These  Greek  stories  have  a  curious 
analogue  in  far-off  Finland,  in  the  per- 
son of  the  musician  Waiiiamoinen.  In 
the  Kakvala,  the  epic  poem  of  Finland, 
his  performance  is  thus  described:  "  He 
raised  his  clear,  limpid  voice,  and  his 
fingers  danced  over  the  strings,  while 
joy  answered  to  joy  and  song  to  song. 
Every  beast  of  the  forest  and  fowl  of  the 
air  came  about  him  to  listen  to  his  sweet 
voice  and  taste  the  music  of  his  strains. 
The  wolf  deserted  the  swamp,  the  bear 
deserted  his  forest  lair;  they  ascended 
the  hedge,  and  the  hedge  gave  way  ;  then 
they  climbed  the  pine  tree  and  sat  in  the 
branches.  The  old  black-bearded  mon- 
arch  of   the   forest  and   all   the   hosts   of 

a 

17 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

Tapio  hastened  to  listen ;  his  wife,  the 
brave  lady  of  Tapiola,  put  on  her  blue 
socks  and  red  laces  and  climbed  on  a  hol- 
low tree  to  listen.  The  eagle  came  down 
from  the  cloud,  the  falcon  dropped 
through  the  air,  the  swan  forsook  the 
limpid  v/aves;  the  swift  lark,  the  light 
swallow,  and  the  graceful  finches  perched 
on  the  shoulders  of  the  god.  Even  the 
sun  and  moon  stood  still.  The  sun 
dropped  his  golden  shuttle  and  the  moon 
her  silver  comb,  so  ravished  were  all 
things  at  the  sound  of  the  voice  of  Wain- 
amoinen." 

This  belief  in  the  magic  power  of  music 
persisted  even  during  the  most  notable  pe- 
riod of  Greek  culture.  Plato,  the  greatest 
of  philosophers,  in  his  Republic,  a  work  de- 
signed to  set  forth  an  ideal  body  politic, 
says:  "  Such  power  resides  in  music  that 
the  invention  of  a  new  kind  of  song  is 
fraught  with  danger  to  the  state,  for 
i8 


Some  Musical  Myths. 

when  the  music  changes,  the  laws  of  the 
state  always  change  with  it."  For  this 
reason  he  considered  music  a  very  im- 
portant branch  of  education,  but  insisted 
that  the  Dorian  and  Phrygian  modes, 
which  were  considered  by  the  Greeks  to 
be  the  "  manly  "  modes,  fit  for  warriors 
to  sing,  should  be  the  only  modes  taught. 
He  decreed  that  the  lyre  should  not  have 
more  than  eight  strings;  and  also  that  if 
any  musician  in  his  model  state  should 
compose  a  new  tune,  he  should  be  re- 
warded for  his  ingenuity,  then  peremp- 
torily banished  on  pain  of  death  if  he 
returned.  It  is  rather  strange  that  he 
singles  out  the  Ionian  scale  especially  for 
his  strictures,  disparaging  it  for  its  ex- 
pression of  softness  and  indolence,  when 
this  Ionian  scale  corresponds  exactly  with 
our  modern  major  scale;  still  stranger  is 
the  fact  that  centuries  after,  when  that 
modification  of  the  Greek  system  known 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

as  the  ecclesiastical  system  of  music  was 
in  vogue,  the  Church  censured  the  Ionian 
scale  for  the  very  same  reasons,  calling  it 
the  "  lascivious  tone," 

It  seems  inexplicable  to  the  modern 
mind  that  such  opinions  could  be  held  by 
one  of  the  greatest  thinkers  the  world 
has  ever  known,  hence  no  surprise  need 
be  felt  that  simple-minded  barbarians 
should  attribute  such  potent  effects  to 
music. 

Some  of  the  strangest  of  these  myths 
concerning  the  power  of  music  come,  as 
might  be  expected,  from  the  far  East. 
In  India  there  is  a  belief  that  certain 
kinds  of  music  are  appropriate  to  certain 
seasons  of  the  year,  and  that  fatal  effects 
will  follow  the  performance  of  a  piece  of 
music  at  an  inappropriate  season.  There 
is  a  story  of  a  certain  musician  who  was 
famed  for  his  skill  in  playing  the  winter 
music.  In  the  course  of  his  wanderings 
20 


Some  Musical  Myths. 

he  arrived  at  the  court  of  a  king  who, 
knowing  of  his  skill  and  being  very  de- 
sirous of  hearing  this  winter  music,  com- 
manded him  to  play  it,  although  it  was 
midsummer.  The  poor  musician  pro- 
tested, but  the  king  insisted,  hinting  that 
if  the  player  did  not  comply  he  would 
relieve  him  of  his  head.  The  unhappy 
musician,  before  beginning  to  play, 
waded  into  the  Ganges  until  he  was  sub- 
merged to  the  neck,  but  the  precaution 
was  vain,  for  no  sooner  had  he  begun 
than  flames  burst  from  his  head,  and  he 
was  burnt  to  ashes,  to  the  great  delight 
of  the  gentle  monarch. 

There  is  a  Chinese  story  about  a  great 
musician  of  ancient  times,  who  made  a 
tune  into  which  he  put  such  wonderful 
expression  that  he  declared  that  if  ever 
in  after  ages  a  musician  should  arise  who 
could  play  it  just  as  it  ought  to  be  played, 
he  would  not  only  understand  what  the 

21 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

tune  meant,  but  would  be  able  to  conjure 
up  the  very  voice  and  appearance  of  the 
author.  Some  thousands  of  years  after 
his  death,  there  lived  a  far-famed  musi- 
cian who  spent  all  his  time  in  practicing 
this  wonderful  tune,  in  the  hope  that  this 
vision  might  be  vouchsafed  to  him,  but  it 
never  came.  One  day  a  young  man  came 
to  him  and  after  prostrating  himself  and 
knocking  three  times  on  the  ground  with 
his  forehead,  said,  "  O  Father  of  music, 
teach  me  to  play  on  the  kin  "  (the  lute  of 
scholars).  The  old  man  began  to  ques- 
tion the  youth,  to  discover  what  know- 
ledge of  music  he  possessed.  At  last  he 
asked  him  if  he  knew  this  wonderful  tune 
of  the  ancient  musician.  The  young 
man  replied,  "  Yes,  and  whenever  I  play 
it  I  see  a  venerable  old  man,  who  smiles 
on  me  and  commends  my  performance  in 
a  soft,  sweet  voice."  On  hearing  this 
the  master  rose   up,   prostrated   himself, 

22 


Some  Musical  Myths. 

and  knocked  six  times  on  the  ground 
with  his  forehead,  and  said,  "  Thou  art 
the  master  and  I  am  the  pupil.  For 
many  years  have  I  studied  this  tune,  but 
never  yet  has  the  vision  been  granted  to 
me." 

There  must  surely  have  been  some 
strange  power  in  these  old  tunes  that  is 
not  possessed  by  any  modern  tune,  ex- 
cept that  mysterious  one  that  nobody 
knows,  that  is  said  to  have  caused  the 
death  of  the  old  cow. 

The  making  of  myths  was  not  confined 
to  the  ancient  world  or  to  barbarians. 
The  intellectual  darkness  of  the  Middle 
Ages  furnished  a  prolific  soil  for  the 
growth  of  myths  as  strange  as  any  that 
the  simplest-minded  savage  could  invent. 
In  their  ignorance  of  history  and  chronol- 
ogy, and  of  the  simplest  scientific  know- 
ledge, the  authors  of  those  days  jumbled 
together  facts  and  fictions,  sacred  and 
23 


Highways  and  By  way. s  of  Music. 

profane  history,  Greeks  and  antediluvians, 
with  delightful  unconsciousness  of  the 
resulting  absurdities.  One  grave  author 
asserts  that  Pythagoras,  who  is  claimed 
by  the  Greeks  as  the  discoverer  of  the 
consonances,  made  his  discovery  in  the 
following  way:  he  was  taking  a  walk  and 
happened  to  pass  the  smithy  where  Tubal 
Cain  was  at  work,  and  observed  that  the 
hammers  he  was  using  gave  sounds  that 
differed  in  pitch  according  to  the  ratios 
of  their  weights.  It  is  curious  that  for 
centuries  it  was  accepted  as  a  fundamen- 
tal tenet  of  musical  faith,  that  Pythagoras 
did  discover  the  ratios  of  sounds  in  this 
way,  when  some  scoffer  arose  and  repeated 
the  experiment  and  proved  that  the  belief 
was  all  wrong. 

Another  author  denies  that  Pythagoras 

discovered  the  consonances,  and  gives  a 

circumstantial  account  of  their  discovery 

by  Tubal  Cain  himself,  in  the  following 

24 


Some  Musical  Myths. 

words:  "  The  Master  of  History  (Moses) 
says  that  Tubal  was  the  father  of  those 
that  play  on  the  cithara  and  other  instru- 
ments; not  that  he  was  the  inventor  of 
these  instruments,  for  they  were  invented 
long  afterward,  but  he  was  the  inventor 
of  music,— that  is,  of  the  consonances. 
As  the  pastoral  life  was  rendered  delight- 
ful by  his  brother,  so  he,  working  in  the 
smith's  art  and  delighted  with  the  sound 
of  the  hammers,  by  means  of  their 
weights  carefully  investigated  the  pro- 
portions and  consonances  arising  from 
them ;  and  because  he  had  heard  that 
Adam  prophesied  of  the  two  tokens,  he, 
lest  this  art  which  he  had  invented  should 
be  lost,  wrote  and  engraved  the  whole  of 
it  on  two  pillars,  one  of  which  was  made 
of  marble  that  it  might  not  be  washed 
away  by  the  deluge,  and  the  other  of 
brick,  that  it  might  not  be  dissolved  by 
fire.  And  Josephus  saith  that  the  marble 
25 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

pillar  is  still  extant  in  the  land  of  Syria." 
This  minute  account  certainly  disposes 
forever  of  the  claim  of  the  Greeks  that 
Pythagoras  was  the  original  discoverer. 

I  cannot  forbear  a  quotation  from 
another  ponderous  writer  which,  while 
not  strictly  a  myth,  illustrates  the  kind 
of  reasoning  that  piles  up  these  monstrous 
fabrications  on  the  slenderest  founda- 
tions. This  writer  gives  a  very  luminous 
account  of  the  cure  of  Saul's  madness  by 
David's  harping.  Taking  as  his  text  the 
words,  "  And  it  came  to  pass,  when  the 
evil  spirit  from  God  was  upon  Saul  that 
David  took  a  harp  and  played,  so  Saul 
was  refreshed  and  the  evil  spirit  departed 
from  him,"  he  discourses  as  follows: 
"  But  we  assert  that  David  freed  Saul  by 
the  sole  force  and  efficacy  of  music,  in 
order  to  demonstrate  which,  let  it  be  ob- 
served that  those  applications  which 
unlock  the  pores,  remove  obstructions, 
26 


Some  Musical  Myths. 

dispel  vapors,  and  cheer  the  heart,  are 
best  calculated  to  cure  madness  and  allay 
the  fury  of  the  mind.  Now,  music  pro- 
duces these  effects,  for  as  it  consists  in 
sounds  generated  by  the  motion  of  the 
air,  it  follows  that  it  will  attenuate  the 
spirits,  which  by  that  motion  are  rendered 
warmer  and  more  quick  in  their  action, 
and  so  dissipate  at  length  the  melancholy 
humor.  On  the  contrary,  where  it  is  neces- 
sary to  relax  the  spirits  and  prevent  the 
wounding  or  affecting  of  the  membranes 
of  the  brain,  in  this  case  it  is  proper  to 
use  slow  progressions  of  sounds,  that 
those  spirits,  and  the  biting  vapors  which 
ascend  thither  from  the  stomach,  spleen, 
and  hypochondria  may  be  quietly  dis- 
missed. Therefore,  the  music  of  David 
might  appease  Saul  in  either  of  these  two 
ways  of  attenuation,  or  dismission;  by 
the  one  he  might  have  expelled  the  mel- 
ancholy from  the  cells  of  the  brain,  or  by 
27 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

the  other  he  might  have  dissolved  it,  and 
sent  it  off  in  thin  vapors  by  insensible 
perspiration."  And  so  on,  through  a  long 
chapter. 

The  myth-making  tendency  seems  to 
be  perennial.  It  crops  out  at  all  times 
and  in  the  most  unexpected  places;  no 
sooner  does  an  individual  become  famous 
or  notorious,  but  the  inventive  faculty  of 
his  fellow-men  sets  to  work  to  weave  all 
sorts  of  strange  stories  about  him.  One 
of  the  best  known  of  modern  myths,  one 
that  has  been  repeated  and  believed  by 
many,  is  the  story  of  the  violinist  Pag- 
anini  having  learned  to  play  wonder- 
fully on  one  string,  through  his  having 
been  imprisoned  for  many  years  and 
having  obtained  a  violin  with  only 
one  string.  Stories  of  like  nature  have 
grown  up  about  many  men  who  have,  in 
virtue  of  their  abilities,  or  even  their 
crimes,  become  the  objects  of  the  wonder, 
28 


Some  Musical  Myths. 

or  envy,  or  admiration  of  their  fellows. 
They  serve  to  illustrate  that  insatiable 
desire  for  the  marvelous  that  is  inherent 
in  humanity,  which  is  ever  ready  to  seek 
in  the  supernatural  the  explanation  or 
origin  of  that  which  is  new  or  unfamiliar. 


29 


II. 

SOME   FACTS  IN  THE  GROWTH  OF  MUSIC. 

HAVING  treated  in  my  first  essay 
of  some  of  the  mythical  accounts 
given  by  various  people  concerning  the 
origin  of  music,  I  will  in  this  essay  at- 
tempt to  sketch  what  seems  to  be  the 
order  in  which  the  various  advances  in 
the  art  of  music  were  made,  from  its 
crude  beginnings  to  its  present  luxuriant 
condition. 

In  the  investigation  of  ethnical  phe- 
nomena it  has  often  been  found  that 
more  trustworthy  results  may  be  obtained 
by  studying  the  actual  condition  of  races 
now  living,  in  various  stages  of  barbarism, 
30 


Some  Facts  in  the  Growth  of  Music. 

their  customs,  arts,  and  beliefs,  than 
by  weaving  elaborate  hypotheses  about 
the  scanty  remains  of  races  that  have 
forever  passed  away.  For  example,  if 
we  find  a  tribe  which  still  uses  stone  or 
horn  implements,  we  gain  more  accurate 
and  more  complete  knowledge  from  ob- 
serving how  they  make  and  use  these  im- 
plements than  we  can  get  from  volumes 
of  ingenious  speculation  written  in  the 
best  appointed  museums.  And  then, 
without  actual  observation  there  is  always 
an  underlying  suspicion  that  the  most 
plausible  hypothesis  may,  after  all,  be 
totally  erroneous. 

It  rarely  happens  that  the  attempt 
to  reconstruct  a  forgotten  art  meets 
the  signal  success  that  attended  one  of 
which  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  a 
witness.  The  celebrated  student  of  In- 
dian life,  and  martyr  to  his  scientific  ardor. 
Colonel    Gushing,    after    much    laborious 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

study  discovered  the  ancient  Peruvian 
art  of  weaving  by  which  were  produced 
such  curious  fabrics.  He  illustrated  his 
discourse  by  weaving  a  small  piece  of  this 
cloth.  At  the  close  of  the  lecture,  a 
gentleman  came  forward  and  said  that  he 
had  just  returned  from  South  America, 
where  he  had  visited  some  hitherto  un- 
known Indian  tribes,  and  confirmed  the 
accuracy  of  Colonel  Cushing's  rediscovery 
with  the  words:  "  I  have  seen  the  South 
American  Indian  women  hundreds  of 
times  weaving  cloth  in  just  that  way." 

As  to  music,  we  have  only  the  vaguest 
and  most  unsatisfactory  accounts  of  its 
condition,  even  among  the  highly  civil- 
ized nations  of  antiquity;  and  to  obtain 
any  trustworthy  knowledge  of  the  growth 
of  the  art,  we  must  turn  our  attention  to 
the  condition  in  which  it  exists  among 
savage  and  semi-civilized  people  at  the 
present  time. 

32 


Some  Facts  in  the  Growth  of  Music. 

To  get  into  the  right  attitude  towards 
primitive  music,  we  must  first  divest  our- 
selves of  nearly  every  trait  that  we  look 
upon  as  essential  to  music;  scale,  key, 
melody,  even  rhythm  must  be  given  up, 
so  that  nothing  remains  but  the  succession 
of  sounds  of  different  but  indefinite  pitch. 

Rowbotham,  in  his  history  of  music, 
gives  numerous  examples  of  songs  of 
South  American  Indians  that  consist  of 
the  constant  iteration  of  two  sounds, 
approximately  a  whole  tone  apart.  Other 
examples  take  in  three  sounds ;  still  others 
take  in  a  fourth  sound,  but,  strangely 
enough,  it  is  not  the  next  succeeding 
sound  to  the  third,  but  is  the  fifth  above 
the  first  sound,  thus  making  a  beginning 
of  the  pentatonic,  or  five-note  scale, — a 
scale  that  exists  in  as  widely  separated 
parts  of  the  world  as  China,  Japan,  North 
America,  Scotland,  and  Ireland. 

It    is    necessary  to    guard  against   the 

33 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

error  of  making  too  wide  generalizations 
from  isolated  instances.  Hence  it  would 
be  unsafe  to  say  that  the  course  of  musi- 
cal development  has  followed  the  same 
path  in  every  case,  or  to  say  that  wherever 
we  find  a  people  at  any  given  point  on 
the  road  towards  civilization,  we  shall  find 
all  the  arts,  or  any  one  of  them,  at  the 
same  stage  of  development  which  they 
have  reached  among  another  race  that 
has  reached  the  same  point  on  that  long 
uphill  path.  For  example,  the  African 
bushmen  are  about  on  the  same  plane  of 
civilization,  or  lack  of  it,  as  the  aborigines 
of  this  country  (that  is,  those  out  of  contact 
with  the  white  race).  Yet  the  bushmen 
have  a  scale  progressing  by  quarter-tones, 
and  can  make  instruments  upon  which 
this  scale  may  be  played.  A  traveler  relates 
that  he  amused  some  of  these  savages  by 
playing  an  air  on  his  flute ;  their  comment 
was  that  "  it  jumped  about  too  much." 
34 


Some  Facts  in  the  Growth  of  Music. 

The  existence  of  a  quarter-tone  scale 
among  a  people  so  barbarous  may  be 
an  unique  case,  but  it  should  make  us 
cautious  about  being  over-confident  in 
our  speculations  on  the  development  of 
music.  Still,  we  are  warranted  in  draw- 
ing certain  conclusions  as  to  the  main 
characteristics  of  primitive  music. 

First,  the  idea  of  key  or  tonality  is  en- 
tirely wanting.  The  idea  of  key  is  an 
outgrowth  of  harmony,  and  the  art  or 
science  of  harmony  is  only  about  two 
centuries  old. 

Second,  it  is  often,  or  generally,  want- 
ing in  rhythm.  Savages  possess  the  sense 
of  rhythm,  but  their  feeling  for  it  is  satis- 
fied by  the  rhythmic  beating  of  a  drum  or 
the  shaking  of  a  rattle.  It  is  said  by  some 
observers  that  three  Indians  will  beat  each 
one  a  different  rhythm  on  his  drum,  while 
the  rest  sing  a  song  that  is  quite  inde- 
pendent of  any  of  these  three  rhythms; 
35 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

and  they  have  founded  a  theory  of 
the  exquisite  rhythmic  sensibility  of  the 
red  man  on  this  observation.  To  the 
writer  it  seems  to  prove  just  the  reverse, 
— a  view  that  has  been  confirmed  by  a 
close,  well-trained  observer,  who  has  made 
an  exhaustive  study  of  Indian  music  in 
Canada. 

Third,  the  relative  pitch  of  the  sounds 
in  savage  music  —  setting  aside  such  re- 
markable cases  as  the  scale  of  the  bush- 
men — is  very  indefinite.  Savage  singers 
always  slide  from  one  sound  to  another, 
and  are  not  by  any  means  certain  to  slide 
the  right  distance  every  time.  The  late 
John  C.  Filmore  told  me  that  in  one  song, 
in  which  there  was  a  leap  of  an  octave, 
the  singer  was  just  as  likely  to  make  it  a 
seventh  or  a  ninth  as  an  octave,  and  then 
to  continue  quite  contentedly  in  the  new 
key  that  would  result  from  this  error. 

It  is  quite  likely  that  music  existed  for 
36 


Some  Facts  in  the  Growth  of  Music. 

a  long  time  and  made  many  advances 
under  these  primitive  conditions.  There 
is  a  wide  difference  in  complexity  be- 
tween the  two-note  songs  of  the  South 
American  Indians  and  the  extremely  in- 
teresting examples  collected  by  Miss 
Fletcher  among  the  Omahas,  But  music, 
like  language,  cannot  grow  beyond  a  cer- 
tain point  until  some  means  has  been 
devised  to  make  a  permanent  record  of  it. 
The  greatest  advance  possible  without  a 
means  of  recording  is  the  adoption  of  a 
scale  by  selecting  some  sounds  and  reject- 
ing others.  When,  or  by  whom,  this  was 
first  done,  and  what  was  the  nature  of 
the  scale  we  may  never  know.  The  wide 
diffusion  of  the  pentatonic  scale  has  led 
many  to  believe  that  it  was  the  first  scale 
to  be  adopted.  But  there  are  certain 
facts  which  appear  to  make  it  probable 
that  the  major  scale  is  of  equal  antiquity 
and  universality.  The  slowness  with 
37 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

which  changes  are  made  in  the  East  is 
proverbial.  The  Burmese  possess  an  in- 
strument made  of  a  series  of  bronze 
bowls.  A  specimen  in  the  museum  of 
the  University  of  Pennsylvania  gives  the 
scale  of  A  major.  A  dulcimer,  the  plates 
of  which  are  of  bronze,  gives  the  scale  of 
D  major.  In  the  same  collection  two 
marimbas  (a  sort  of  xylophone)  from 
Africa  give,  one  the  scale  of  A,  the  other 
of  D  major.  A  number  of  Indian  flutes, 
lately  added  to  the  museum  by  the  direc- 
tor, are  all  pierced  with  six  holes,  and 
all  give  major  scales,  with  slight  allowance 
for  defective  piercing.  These  three  ex- 
amples, taken  from  such  widely  separated 
localities  as  Asia,  Africa,  and  North 
America,  all  used  by  races  that  have 
probably  used  them  from  time  immemo- 
rial, go  far  to  prove  that  the  major  scale 
may  be  quite  as  old  and  as  widespread  as 
the  pentatonic. 

38 


Some  Facts  in  the  Growth  of  Music. 

With  our  perfected  system  of  notation 
it  is  such  an  easy  matter  to  reduce  the 
elusive  material,  sound,  to  order,  that  we 
are  unable  to  appreciate  the  difficulties 
that  had  to  be  overcome  by  the  first 
genius  who  undertook  to  make  a  record 
of  these  sounds.  In  my  first  essay  I 
gave  some  account  of  the  way  in  which 
the  Chinese  did  it,  by  means  of  tubes  of 
standard  lengths.  In  Greece  the  same 
end  was  reached  by  the  device  of  the 
monochord,  a  string  of  standard  length 
put  in  a  state  of  tension  by  a  standard 
weight,  and  divided  in  aliquot  parts  by 
means  of  bridges. 

The  next  step  is  of  prime  importance : 
having  determined  the  series  of  sounds,  it 
is  then  necessary  to  devise  a  graphic  repre- 
sentation of  them.  Many  curious  contri- 
vances have  been,  and  are,  used  for  this 
purpose,  but  the  only  one  of  especial  in- 
terest to  us  is  the  plan  invented  by  the 
39 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

Greeks,  as  it  has,  in  many  particulars,  sur- 
vived to  the  present  day  in  our  musical  sys- 
tem. To  them  we  owe  the  adoption  of  the 
first  seven  letters  of  the  alphabet  to  indi- 
cate the  seven  sounds  of  the  diatonic  scale. 
It  is  because  they  began  their  series  of 
sounds  on  A  (first  space  in  bass  staff),  that 
we  call  that  sound  A,  with  the  unfortu- 
nate result  that  our  natural  scale  does  not 
begin,  as  it  ought,  on  A,  but  on  C.  We 
are  indebted  to  them  for  many  of  our 
musical  terms,  such  as  Tone,  Semi-tone, 
Chromatic,  Diapason,  Symphony, Orches- 
tra ;  though  many  have  changed  somewhat 
in  their  meaning. 

There  were  some  complications  in  the 
Greek  system  of  notation  that  have  never 
been  successfully  unraveled,  and  as  there 
is  none  of  their  music  in  existence,  we 
are  quite  in  the  dark  as  to  what  it  may 
have  been. 

The  Greek  philosophers,  nearly  all  of 
40 


Some  Facts  in  the  Growth  of  Music. 

whom  seem  to  have  been  in  some  sense 
musicians,  have  so  beclouded  the  subject 
with  misty,  mathematical,  arithmetical, 
and  transcendental  speculations  that  it  is 
impossible  to  determine  even  the  nature 
of  their  scale.  One  thing  seems  certain  : 
that  is,  that  music  for  centuries  was 
simply  melodic,  as  it  is  yet  among  by  far 
the  greatest  majority  of  peoples.  What- 
ever may  have  been  the  Greek  system  of 
notation,  it  seems  to  have  soon  disap- 
peared entirely,  its  sole  surviving  frag- 
ment being  the  application  of  the  seven 
letters  to  the  diatonic  scale. 

During  the  early  centuries  of  the  Chris- 
tian era  the  art  of  music  languished,  and 
had  it  not  been  that  the  Church  adopted 
it,  and  that  a  long  series  of  devout 
churchmen  devoted  their  lives  to  its 
study,  it  might  have  died  out,  except  in 
the  form  of  ballads  and  dance  tunes;  or, 
of    a    surety,    its    development    into    its 

41 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

wondrous  modern  forms  might  have  been 
delayed  for  centuries. 

Music  as  a  great  art  is  preeminently  the 
Christian  art.  These  early  churchmen, 
whose  labors  were  devoted  solely  to  the 
task  of  making  music  a  fit  adjunct  to  the 
service  of  the  Church,  little  thought  that 
they  were  laying  the  foundations  of  a 
new  art. 

The  process  was  long  and  slow.  It 
seems  strange  that  in  their  first  attempts 
to  make  a  record  of  melody  they  hit  on 
the  clumsy  expedient  of  the  neumes, 
when  they  already  had  the  sounds  in- 
dicated by  letters,  and  might  have  simply 
placed  the  appropriate  letter  over  the 
syllable  or  word  to  which  it  was  to  be 
sung.  The  most  that  the  neumes  could 
accomplish  was  to  indicate  ivlicn  the 
voice  must  ascend  or  descend,  without 
telling  how  far  it  should  do  so.  This 
was  improved  upon  by  the  adoption  of  a 


Some  Facts  in  the  Growth  of  Music. 

line,  on,  above,  or  below  which  the 
neumes  were  written  ;  a  further  improve- 
ment' was  the  discarding  of  the  neumes 
and  the  substitution  of  square  signs,  like 
a  modern  w^hole  rest. 

Another  system  was  the  use  of  a  staff 
of  any  number  of  lines,  each  space  in 
which  represented  a  degree,  the  words  or 
syllables  being  written  in  these  spaces. 
This  system  appears  to  have  met  with 
little  favor,  as  a  return  was  made  to  the 
neumes;  but  greater  precision  was  given 
by  using  a  staff,  one  of  the  lines  of  which 
was  red  and  represented  the  sound  of  C; 
or  one  was  green  or  yellow  and  repre- 
sented the  sound  of  F.  Then,  by  a 
stroke  of  genius,  some  one  discovered 
that  it  served  the  same  purpose  and  was 
less  troublesome  to  write  C  or  F  on  the 
line  (long  afterwards  G  was  also  used), 
and  we  have  the  origin  of  our  clefs, 
which  are  merely  slightly  modified  and 
43 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

ornamented    forms  of  the  letters  C,    F, 
and  G. 

Notation  was  now  capable  of  indicating 
pitch,  but  not  duration.  So  long  as 
music  was  only  melodic,  the  necessity  for 
indicating  the  duration  of  sounds  was  not 
felt,  especially  as  church  music,  as  then 
practiced,  was  unrhythmic, — a  mode  of 
performance  that  still  survives  in  the 
singing  of  Gregorian  chants  and  plain 
song. 

But  when  musicians  began  to  experi- 
ment in  putting  sounds  together,  the 
necessity  became  apparent,  and  notes 
were  invented  to  meet  it.  Unfortu- 
nately, their  use  was  complicated  by 
various  clumsy  expedients,  such  as  pro- 
lation,  to  regulate  their  relative  values. 
These  were  all  swept  away  by  the  ex- 
pedient of  putting  a  dot  after  a  note  to 
increase  its  value,  and  by  the  invention 
of  bars. 

44 


Some  Facts  In  the  Growth  of  Music. 

The  machinery  of  notation  was  now 
complete;  Httle  has  been  added  to  it, 
and  it  is  found  adequate  to  the  expres- 
sion of  every  conceivable  variety  of 
rhythm,  accent,  pitch,  and  duration  with 
perfect  ease  and  precision. 

While  this  system  of  notation  was 
slowly  getting  itself  into  form,  the  ques- 
tion of  scales  was  still  far  from  settled. 

While  the  ecclesiastical  or  untempered 
scales  served  the  purposes  of  melody  well 
enough,  it  was  gradually  discovered  that 
they  were  unsuited  for  the  purposes  of 
harmony,  except  to  a  very  limited  ex- 
tent; and,  as  keyed  instruments  were 
gradually  brought  nearer  perfection,  it 
was  found  to  be  impossible  so  to  con- 
struct them  that  they  would  sound  in 
tune  except  in  a  very  few  keys.  The 
problem  resolved  itself  into  this:  what 
series  of  sounds  may  be  used  that  will, 
without  being  too  numerous,  make  it 
43 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

possible  to  begin  a  scale  on  every  sound 
of  the  series;  that  will,  with  its  chords, 
be  near  enough  to  perfect  tune  to  satisfy 
the  ear  ?  The  problem  was  impossible  of 
solution  scientifically,  but  it  was  solved 
empirically  by  dividing  the  octave  into 
twelve  equal  parts.  An  Italian  mathema- 
tician and  musician,  Zarlino,  has  generally 
been  credited  with  this  discovery,  but 
later  researches  indicate  that  he  was  antici- 
pated by  a  German,  Andreas  Werkmeister. 
This  discovery  proved  to  be  the  key- 
stone of  the  musical  fabric.  It  was  at  once 
followed  by  an  outburst  of  musical  pro- 
ductiveness that  made  the  eighteenth  and 
nineteenth  centuries  the  golden  age  of 
music.  This  golden  age  began  with  Each 
and  Handel,  and  ended  with  Schumann 
and  Mendelssohn.  The  life  of  one  man, 
Clementi,  covered  the  whole  period  ;  he 
was  a  youth  of  eighteen  when  Handel  died, 
and  he  outlived  Beethoven  four  years. 
46 


Some  Facts  in  the  Growth  of  Music. 

Such,  in  brief,  has  been  the  course  of 
musical  development  from  the  earliest 
times  of  which  we  have  any  trustworthy 
records  to  the  present  time.  There  have 
been  times  when  this  growth  seems  to 
have  been  completely  arrested,  followed 
by  times  when  its  progress  was  very 
rapid.  Improvements  in  notation  and  in 
the  construction  of  musical  instruments 
have  always  been  followed  by  rapid  ad- 
vances in  the  art  of  composition. 

During  the  first  three  Christian  cen- 
turies there  are  very  few  references  to 
music  to  be  found.  Pliny,  in  the  second 
century,  mentions  casually  that  it  was 
the  custom  of  the  Christians  to  sing 
antiphonally.  The  first  definite  notice 
we  have  belongs  to  the  fourth  century, 
viz.,  the  founding  of  schools  for  the 
study  of  church  music.  What  was  the 
nature  of  the  music  taught  we  have  no 
means  of  knowing.  A  little  more  light 
47 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

was  let  in  a  few  years  later  when  Am- 
brose of  Milan  established  the  four  scales, 
since  known  as  the  authentic  scales,  viz., 
those  of  D,  called  Dorian  (after  the  Greek 
system);  E,  Phrygian;  F,  Lydian  (the 
Greek  Lydian  began  on  F  ^);  and  G, 
Mixo  Lydian. 

Three  centuries  now  passed  without 
any  record.  Then  Pope  Gregory  came. 
He  added  four  more  scales,  each  begin- 
ning a  fourth  below  one  of  the  authentic 
scales;  these  were  called  plagal,  or  bor- 
rowed, scales.  Two  centuries  after  Greg- 
ory, Charlemagne  gave  a  great  impulse  to 
the  study  of  music,  by  founding  schools 
all  over  Europe  for  the  study  of  Gregorian 
music.  Up  to  this  time  music  seems  to 
have  been  melodic  only,  but  shortly  after 
the  death  of  Charlemagne  a  monk  named 
Hucbald  appears  to  have  made  the  first 
recorded  attempt  at  the  combination  of 
sounds.  He  was  followed  by  another 
48 


Some  Facts  in  the  Growth  of  Music. 

monk,  Guido.  The  world  owes  a  great 
debt  to  the  studious  monks  of  old. 
Guido  is  in  many  respects  one  of  the 
most  interesting  figures  we  meet  in  the 
history  of  music.  His  contributions  to 
the  art  were  numerous  and  important. 
He  is  credited  with  many  improvements 
in  notation,  with  the  invention  of  the 
hexachord  scale  system,  and  with  the  ap- 
plication of  the  syllables,  still  in  use,  to 
the  notes  of  the  scale. 

The  twelfth  century  was  reached  before 
notes  were  invented  by  Franco  of  Co- 
logne, another  monk.  A  short  time  after 
Franco,  Marchettus  of  Padua  wrote  the 
first  treatise  in  which  rules  were  laid 
down  for  the  combination  of  sounds. 
From  this  time  the  rate  of  musical  de- 
velopment was  constantly  accelerated. 
Foremost  in  the  race  came  the  Nether- 
landers.  What  is  known  as  the  Belgian 
school  began  with  Du  Vixy  and  ended 
4./ 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

two  centuries  later  with  Lassus,  At  his 
death  the  scepter  of  musical  supremacy 
passed  over  to  Italy,  where  the  old  classi- 
cal school  culminated  in  Palestrina. 
Further  progress  was  not  possible  under 
the  old  conditions.  The  new  condition 
presented  itself  in  the  discovery  of  the 
tempered  scale.  Then  the  scepter  of 
supremacy  passed  over  to  Germany,  and 
the  great  period  of  modern  music  began. 

When  we  consider  the  wonderful  com- 
plexity of  a  modern  symphony,  or  oratorio, 
or  opera,  it  seems  almost  incredible  that 
it  has  taken  barely  two  centuries  to  de- 
velop these  forms;  still  more  strange  does 
it  seem  that  in  the  barbarous  diaphony 
of  the  tenth  century  there  lay  the  germ 
of  modern  harmony,  and  in  the  simple 
ballads  and  dance  tunes,  well  called  folk- 
songs, there  was  latent  the  stately  sym- 
phony. 

The  history  of  music  is  an  excellent 
50 


Some  Facts  in  the  Growth  of  Music. 

illustration  of  Spencer's  dictum  that  "  all 
progress  is  from  indefinite  homogeneity 
to  definite  heterogeneity."  Folk-tune 
and  church  chant  have  grown  and  differ- 
entiated into  countless  styles,  which  are 
being  constantly  added  to,  as  new  com- 
posers of  ability  arise. 

In  conclusion,  the  musician  should 
never  forget  that  it  was  the  tempered  scale 
that  made  Bach,  Handel,  Haydn,  Mo- 
zart, Beethoven,  Brahms,  and  Wagner 
possible.  It  was  the  want  of  the  tem- 
pered scale  that  retarded  the  development 
of  music  for  so  many  centuries.  The 
musician  who  is  familiar  with  the  history 
of  his  art  is  in  no  danger  of  being  misled 
by  the  schemes  of  enthusiastic  seekers 
after  absolute  tuning. 

The  adoption  of  any  of  these  systems 
would  be  the  utter  destruction  of  all  the 
music  that  we  now  look  upon  as  the  great- 
est possible  expression  of  the  art. 
51 


III. 

LITERARY    MEN   AND    MUSIC. 

IT  may  be  laid  down  as  an  all  but  uni- 
versal rule  that  poets  and  literary 
people  in  general  are  not  only  ignorant 
of  music  but  singularly  wanting  in  a  due 
appreciation  of  its  position  among  the 
arts,  and  this  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
they  so  often  indulge  in  enthusiastic 
laudation  of  music, — an  enthusiasm  all 
too  devoid  of  knowledge. 

One  of  the  commonest  mistakes  arises 
from  the  confusing  of  "  agreeable  sounds" 
with  "  music."  They  write  of  the  music 
of  birds,  of  winds,  of  waters;  pleasant  all 
these  things  are,  but  they  are  not  "music" 
52 


Literary  Men  and  Music. 

except  in  a  metaphorical  sense.  Sound, 
no  matter  how  agreeable,  does  not  be- 
come music  until  it  is  organized;  definite 
pitch,  definite  relations  of  various  kinds, 
and,  above  all,  definite  "  forms  "  are  the 
essentials  of  music. 

Another  very  common  error  is  to  con- 
found the  music  with  the  poetry.  Poets 
and  writers  rarely  refer  to  instrumental 
music,  and  when  they  do  it  is  generally  to 
its  simplest  forms, — dances  or  marches. 
When  they  write  of  music  it  is  almost  cer- 
tain to  be  of  song.  This  is  probably  a 
survival  from  the  time  when  the  poet  was 
literally  the  singer;  he  is  so  called  in 
poetry  yet.  But  the  gradual  separation 
of  these  arts,  that  the  growth  of  music  as 
a  "  great  art  "  has  caused,  has  separated 
the  two  functions  so  widely  that  the  poet 
to-day  generally  knows  even  less  about 
music  than  the  musician  knows  about 
poetry. 

53 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

One  of  the  best  illustrations  of  this 
confusion  may  be  found  in  an  essay  by 
Catlyle.  He  was  somehow  persuaded  to 
attend  a  performance  of  Don  Giovanni, 
and  he  writes  his  impressions  of  Mozart's 
masterpiece.  Not  a  word  does  he  say 
about  the  music,  but  he  falls  foul  of 
Mozart  for  not  following  the  example 
of  the  Greek  poet  Tyrtaeus,  who  "  sang" 
patriotic  songs  that  roused  his  country- 
men to  beat  back  their  enemies.  Thus 
he  condemns  Mozart,  the  artist  in  music, 
for  not  being  like  Tyrtaeus,  the  artist  in 
poetry.  Then,  with  characteristically 
grim  humor,  he  seizes  on  the  ballet,  for 
which  Mozart  was  in  no  way  responsible, 
and  compares  the  poor  ballet-dancers  to 

so  many  frantically  jumping  scissors 
with  the  point  of  one  blade  stuck  in  the 
ground  and  bid  to  '  stand,  in  the  devil's 
name.*  "  And  this  is  all  that  the  greatest 
literary  man  of  the  age  could  find  to  say 
54 


Literary  Men  and  Music. 

about  the  greatest  musical  "  art  work" 
of  its  kind  in  existence. 

The  very  rarity  of  literary  men  who 
write  knowingly  of  music  is  of  the  na- 
ture of  those  exceptions  that  are  said  to 
prove  the  rule.  Foremost  among  these 
exceptional  ones  stands  Shakespeare;  he 
is  full  of  references  to  music,  of  such  a 
kind  as  make  it  evident  that  he  was  fa- 
miliar with  the  "  art  music  "  of  his  time. 
One  might  almost  construct  a  primer 
of  seventeenth  century  music  from  his 
allusions.  He  writes  knowingly  of  the 
hexachord,  of  part  music,  of  various 
instruments,  plain  song,  descant,  qua- 
trible,  and  quinible  singing, —  in  fact, 
in  music,  as  in  everything  else,  he  seems 
in  some  way  to  have  absorbed  all  the 
knowledge  of  his  time. 

The  next  great  exception  was  Milton. 
He  was  the  son  of  one  of  the  best  madri- 
galists  who  contributed  to  the  Triumphs 
55 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

of  Oi'eana ;  he  was  trained  in  the  art, 
counting  among  his  many  accompHsh- 
ments  that  of  playing  the  organ.  Conse- 
quently, all  his  references  to  music  are 
intelligible  and  correct.  Counterpoint 
was  never  so  beautifully  defined  as  in 
the  oft-quoted  lines  in  L Allegro  : 

"  In  notes  with  many  a  winding  bout 
Of  linked  sweetness  long  drawn  out, 
With  wanton  heed  and  giddy  cunning, 
The  melting  voice  through  mazes  running, 
Untwisting  all  the  chains  that  tie 
The  hidden  soul  of  Harmony." 

Nor  a  cathedral  service,  as  in  the  lines 
from  the  contrasted  poem,  11  Pcnscroso  : 

"  Then  let  the  pealing  organ  blow 
To  the  full-voiced  choir  below. 
In  service  high  and  anthems  clear. 
As  may  with  sweetness  through  mine  ear 
Dissolve  me  into  extasies, 
And  bring  all  Heaven  before  mine  eyes." 

Among  poets  of  the  first  rank  there  is 

56 


Literary  Men  and  Music. 

only  one  other  exception  ;  for  the  n:iusi- 
cian,  the  most  important  of  the  three, — 
Robert  Browning,  He  had  the  advan- 
tage of  thorough  musical  training  and 
thought  seriously  at  one  time  of  making 
music  his  life-work.  One  result  of  this 
training  has  been  that  he  has  treated 
music  with  a  fullness  of  knowledge  and 
sympathy  far  beyond  that  of  any  other 
literary  man.  Four  of  his  poems  are 
devoted  exclusively  to  music,  and  they 
display  a  profoundness  of  insight,  and  a 
practical  and  theoretical  knowledge  that 
make  these  poems  worthy  of  the  careful 
study  of  every  thoughtful  musician.  In 
Master  Hugucs  of  Saxc-Gotha  we  find  a 
statement  of  the  inadequacy  of  the  purely 
mechanical,  soulless, old  contrapuntal  style 
to  express  the  emotion  that  ought  to  be  the 
aim  of  music.  In  a  Toccata  by  Gabippi'\?,2, 
statement  that  music  is  a  reflection  of  the 
life  and  thought  of  the  period  that  gave  it 
57 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

birth.  In  Abt  Vogler  is  set  forth  the  fact 
that  music  is,  in  a  pecuHar  degree,  an 
evolution  from  the  inner  consciousness, 
and  therefore  at  the  same  time  the  most 
human  and  divine  of  the  arts. 

Parlcyings  with  Cliarlcs  Avisofi  is  a  pro- 
found investigation  into  the  reasons  of 
the  power  of  music  to  express  emotion, 
and  why  the  music  that  at  one  period 
seems  the  most  perfect  expression  of  an 
emotion  should  at  a  later  period  seem 
utterly  dead,  as  if  its  emotion  had  evapo- 
rated like  the  perfume  of  a  withered 
flower. 

After  Milton  the  next  poet  of  any 
eminence  was  Dryden,  but  he  treated  the 
subject  in  the  conventional  Greek  fash- 
ion, attributing  certain  wonderful  effects 
to  "  modes,"  which  effects,  if  ever  pro- 
duced, were  due  to  the  poetry  rather 
than  to  the  music. 

There  was  at  the  beginning  of  the 
58 


Literary  Men  and  Music. 

eighteenth  century  a  sort  of  sham  en- 
thusiasm for  Greek  "  culture,"  which  is 
well  exemplified  in  an  ode  by  Collins, 
called  TJic  Passions.  He  pathetically 
calls  on  musicians  to  "  revive  the  just 
designs  of  Greece,"  or,  in  other  words, 
to  give  up  melody,  harmony,  and  coun- 
terpoint, and  also  all  the  rapidly  improv- 
ing musical  instruments,  and  return  to 
the  monotonous  chant,  accompanied  by 
an  eight-stringed  lyre  and  a  flute  made 
from  the  leg-bone  of  a  crane.  Of  course 
this  view  had  its  origin  in  that  confusion 
of  the  poet  with  the  musician  that  misled 
Collins  as  it  did  Carlyle.  One  of  the 
foremost  advocates  of  these  imaginary 
"  just  designs  of  Greece  "  was  Sir  Wil- 
liam Temple.  He,  according  to  Haw- 
kins, while  contending  earnestly  for  the 
superiority  of  Greek  music,  frankly  con- 
fessed his  "  utter  incapacity  to  judge 
about  it."  His  views  may  be  judged  of 
59 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

by  the  following  delicious  piece  of  ab- 
surdity from  his  Essay  on  Ayicient  and 
Modern  Learning  : 

What  are  become  of  the  charms  of 
music,  by  which  men  and  beasts,  fishes, 
fowls,  and  serpents  were  so  frequently 
enchanted,  and  their  very  nature  changed ; 
by  which  the  passions  of  men  are  raised 
to  the  greatest  height  and  violence,  and 
then  so  suddenly  appeased,  so  as  they 
might  be  justly  said  to  be  turned  into 
lions  or  lambs,  into  wolves  or  into  harts, 
by  the  powers  and  charms  of  this  admir- 
able art  ?  'T  is  agreed  of  all  the  learned 
that  the  science  of  music  so  admired  by 
the  ancients  is  wholly  lost  in  the  world, 
and  that  what  we  have  now  is  made  up 
of  certain  notes  that  fell  into  the  fancy  or 
observation  of  a  poor  friar  in  chanting  his 
matins:  so  as  those  two  divine  excel- 
lencies of  music  and  poetry  are  grown  in 
a  manner  to  be  little  more  but  the  one 
60 


Literary  Men  and  Music. 

fiddling  and  the  other  rhynaing,  and  are 
indeed  very  worthy  the  ignorance  of  the 
friar  and  the  barbarousness  of  the  Goths 
that  introduced  them  among  us." 

The  great  literary  arbiter  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  Dr.  Johnson,  found 
nothing  more  to  say  about  music  than 
that  it  was  "  a  less  unpleasant  kind  of 
noise,"  although  Boswell,  to  be  sure,  tells 
a  story  of  his  being  very  much  affected 
by  a  quartet  of  horns  which  he  heard 
at  a  funeral.  Possibly  the  occasion  had 
more  to  do  with  it  than  the  music. 

It  is  rather  remarkable  that  a  fine 
rhythmic  sense  may  exist  without  the 
least  melodic  sense.  Many  poets  whose 
lyrics  have  proved  inspirations  to  genera- 
tions of  song  writers  have  been  utterly 
unmusical  themselves.  Walter  Scott  is 
a  shining  example;  the  rhythmic  "  lilt  " 
of  his  lyrics  is  irresistible,  yet  he  con- 
fessed his  inability  to  distinguish  one  tune 
6i 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

from  another,  and  said  he  got  more  pleas- 
ure from  Hstening  to  a  bagpipe  than  from 
any  other  kind  of  music. 

In  striking  contrast  to  Browning's  in- 
terest in  music  is  the  almost  entire 
absence  of  allusion  to  it  in  Tennyson. 
His  allusions  are  always  vague,  and  give 
the  impression  that  he  knew  very  little 
and  cared  less  about  it.  There  is  but 
one  case  in  which  he  makes  a  definite 
allusion  to  music, —  in  Maud;  but  he 
makes  the  "  flute,  violin,  and  bassoon  " 
do  duty  for  the  whole  orchestra  (perhaps 
synecdochically),  and  the  dancers  are 
made  to  "dance  in  tune,'''  —  by  what 
figure  of  speech  it  would  be  difficult  to 
say. 

A  very  striking  book  has  been  pub- 
lished of  late,  called  Riiskin  on  Mnsic. 
This  book  was  not  written  by  Ruskin, 
but  is  a  compilation  from  his  writings,  of 
references  to  music.  Its  interest  lies  in 
62 


Literary  Men  and  Music. 

the  fact  that  it  indicates  a  continually 
growing  interest  in  music  as  a  "  great 
art  "  that  culminates  in  enthusiastic  ad- 
miration. This  is  an  example  of  rare 
open-mindedness  on  the  part  of  a  literary 
man,  forming  a  strong  contrast  to  the 
half-supercilious,  patronizing  way  in  which 
they  generally  treat  this  subject,  like  the 
great  Goethe's  condescending  patronage 
of  "  our  Felix,"  and  his  "  eying  ask- 
ance "  of  Beethoven,  whom  it  was  im- 
possible to  patronize. 

A  certain  famous  English  poet  and 
man  of  letters  who  visited  America  some 
years  ago,  met  at  a  reception  given  in  his 
honor  by  a  prominent  Philadelphian,  a 
well-known  musical  amateur  who  had  set 
to  music  one  of  the  poet's  lyrics  very 
successfully.  The  poet  praised  the  set- 
ting, but  said  it  was  not  his  idea  of  what 
the  right  kind  of  melody  for  these  words 
ought  to  be,  adding,  "  Come,  let  us  find 
63 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

a  quiet  corner  and  I  will  give  you  my 
idea."  They  did  so,  and  the  poet 
growled  through  his  poem  on  two  or 
three  notes  "  below  the  bass  clef,"  with- 
out either  time  or  tune,  and  wound  up 
with,  "  Now,  tJiat  's  the  kind  of  melody 
these  words  ought  to  have." 

This  poet's  idea  of  melody  was  on  a 
par  with  a  certain  worthy,  learned,  west- 
ern bishop's  idea  of  "  choral."  When 
about  to  officiate  in  a  city  church,  he 
sent  a  message  to  the  organist  to  come 
to  the  vestry,  and  then  and  there  im- 
pressed on  the  "  music  man  "  that,  for 
that  day  at  least,  the  service  must  be 
"  choral,  purely  choral."  He  repeated 
the  word  so  often  that  it  struck  the 
organist  that  it  would  be  well  to  ascertain 
just  what  he  meant  by  "  choral."  In 
reply  to  the  organist's  question,  the 
bishop,  with  a  look-  of  infinite  surprise 
and  pity  for  his  ignorance,  said,  "  Why! 
64 


Literary  Men  and  Music. 

music  that  everybody  knows,  of  course, — 
like  Brattle  Street  or  RathbunS' 

As  a  set-off  to  these  unmusical  literary 
men,  the  following  story  of  an  unpoetical 
musician  may  be  related.  Henry  Lawes, 
the  friend  of  Milton  and  the  composer 
of  the  music  to  Comics,  was  so  little  im- 
pressed with  the  beauty  of  the  final 
couplet  of  the  Echo  Song, 

"  So  may'st  thou  be  transplanted  to  the  skies 
And  lend  new  grace  to  all  Heaven's  har- 
monies," 

that     with     dull    musical    pedantry    he 
changed  it  to 

"  So  may'st  thou  be  transplanted  to  the  skies 
And    /lo/d  a   counterpoint  to  all   Heaven's 
harmonies." 

The  story  can  hardly  be  true,  else  surely 

Milton,   God-fearing  man    of    peace    and 

Puritan  though  he  was,  would  have  risen 

65 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music, 

up   and   smitten    him    as    Samuel   smote 
Agag. 

Turning  from  the  poets  to  the  novel- 
ists, the  three  great  names  of  Thackeray, 
Dickens,  and  George  Eliot  naturally  pre- 
sent themselves.  George  Eliot  was  an 
accomplished  musician,  and  all  the  refer- 
ences to  music  in  her  writings  display  her 
knowledge  and  appreciation  of  the  art. 
But  we  may  search  in  vain  for  the  least 
indication  of  either  knowledge  of  or 
sympathy  with  music  in  the  works  of 
Dickens  or  Thackeray.  Allusions  in 
plenty  there  are,  but  they  are  either  of 
the  ordinary  literary  type,  or  else  half 
or  wholly  satirical, —  indicaiions  of  the 
ordinary  attitude  of  cultivated  people — 
that  is,  literary  people  —  towards  music; 
that  is,  that  ignorance  of  it  is  a  thing  on 
which  to  pride  one's  self,  and  that  those 
who  profess  enthusiasm  for  its  higher 
forms,  especially  the  symphonic,  are 
66 


Literary  Men  and  Music. 

amiable  idiots,  to  be  tolerated  and 
laughed  at  by  those  of  superior  intelli- 
gence. 

As  to  Dickens,  the  humor  of  some  of 
his  musical  vaticinations  is  irresistible; 
witness  the  following  description  of  an 
amateur,  from  Donibey  and  Son  : 

"  After  knocking  once  at  the  door  atid 
getting  no  response,  this  gentleman  sat 
down  on  a  bench  in  the  little  porch  to 
wait.  A  certain  skilful  action  of  his 
fingers  as  he  hummed  some  bars  and  beat 
time  on  the  seat  beside  him  seemed  to 
denote  the  musician,  and  the  extraordin- 
ary satisfaction  he  derived  from  humming 
something  very  long  and  very  slow, 
which  had  no  recognizable  tune,  seemed 
to  denote  that  he  was  a  scientific  one." 
(With  the  laity,  scientific  music  always 
means  music  they  do  not  like.)  "  The 
gentleman  was  still  twirling  a  theme 
which  seemed  to  go  round,  and  round, 
67 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

and  round,  and  in,  and  in,  and  in,  and  to 
involve  itself  like  a  corkscrew  twirled 
upon  a  table  without  getting  any  nearer 
to  anything,  when  the  door  opened," 
etc.  On  another  occasion  this  same 
gentleman  is  described  as  "  whistling  ac- 
curately through  the  whole  of  Beethoven's 
Sonata  in  i?."  Very  amusing,  but  hardly 
just  towards  the  "  art  of  music  " ;  still,  a 
perfect  picture  of  the  attitude  of  the 
generality  of  literary  men  towards 
"  scientific   music." 

In  Martin  Chuzzleivit  there  is  an  ac- 
count of  a  serenade  which,  in  addition  to 
its  humor,  is  doubtless  a  true  picture  of 
many  similar  attempts  to  make  music. 
When  "  Todgcrs's  boarding-house  rises 
to  the  occasion,"  to  do  honor  to  the 
arrival  of  the  Misses  Pecksniff,  "  one 
gentleman  took  the  tenor,  another  gentle- 
man took  the  bass,  and  the  rest  took  what 
they  could  get."  The  extemporaneous 
68 


Literary  Men  and  Music. 

efforts  of  amateurs  at  part-singing  could 
not  be  more  aptly  described. 

In  the  writings  of  the  gentle  satirist, 
Thackeray,  there  are  several  allusions  to 
music,  or  rather  to  musicians,  in  which 
he  exposes  the  humbug  and  pretension 
that  characterize  too  many  of  the  pro- 
fessors of  the  art,  or  makes  merry  over 
the  inanities  of  the  "  words  "  of  popular 
songs  or  operas.  One  of  his  short  stories, 
The  Raveiisiving,  is  devoted  to  the  history 
of  a  singer,  and  incidentally  to  that  of  the 
various  teachers  and  impresarios  into 
whose  clutches  she  fell.  There  is  an  in- 
imitable description  of  a  teacher  named 
Baroski,— vain,  greedy,  lying,  villainous 
in  every  way,  yet  a  master  of  the  art  of 
singing.  The  portrait  is  so  true  to  nature 
that  some  well-known  London  teacher 
must  unconsciously  have  sat  for  it. 

Baroski's  school  and  his  pupils  are 
photographed  as  follows  :  "  Benjamin 
69 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

Baroski  was  one  of  the  chief  ornaments 
of  the  musical  profession  in  London ;  he 
charged  a  guinea  for  a  lesson  of  three 
quarters  of  an  hour,  abroad,  and  had 
furthermore  a  school  at  his  own  resi- 
dence, where  pupils  assembled  in  con- 
siderable numbers,  and  of  that  curious 
mixed  kind  which  those  may  see  who  fre- 
quent these  places  of  instruction.  There 
were  very  innocent  young  ladies  with 
their  mammas,  who  would  hurry  them 
off  trembling  to  the  farther  corner  of  the 
room  when  certain  doubtful  professional 
characters  made  their  appearance.  There 
was  Miss  Grigg,  who  sang  at  the  Found- 
ling; Mr.  Johnson,  who  sang  at  the  Eagle 
Tavern;  Miss  Froravanti,  who  sang  no- 
where, but  was  always  just  coming  out 
at  the  Italian  opera;  Lord  Simpetor,  a 
tenor;  Captain  Guzzard  of  the  Guards,  a 
bass;  Mr,  Bulger  the  dentist,  who  was 
neglecting  his  gold  plates  and  fillings  for 
70 


Literary  Men  and  Music. 

his  voice,  as  every  unfortunate  individual 
will  do  who  is  bitten  by  the  music  mania; 
pale  governesses  and  professionals  in 
shabby  clothes,  who  were  parting  with 
their  hard-earned  little  stock  of  guineas 
that  they  might  say  they  were  pupils  of 
the  great  Baroski." 

From  Baroski  the  "Ravenswing"  goes 
to  another  teacher  who  is  the  antipodes  of 
Baroski,  Sir  George  Thrum.  This  worthy 
is  an  incarnation  of  the  most  odious  form 
of  intense  respectability,  with  a  large  and 
awful  wife  who  is  a  dragon  of  virtue  and 
propriety,  who  kept  watch  over  the  mas- 
ter and  his  pupils,  and  who  was  "  the 
strictest  guardian  of  female  virtue  on  or 
off  the  stage." 

Thackeray  must  have  observed  closely 
the  manners  of  singing  teachers,  as  he 
makes  Sir  George  say  to  the  "  Ravens- 
wing  "  that  the  first  thing  to  be  done  is 
"  to  unlearn  all  that  Baroski  has  taucrht 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

her."  A  good  deal  of  the  story  is  taken 
up  with  an  account  of  the  devices  made 
use  of  by  managers  and  teachers  when 
about  to  bring  out  a  new  opera  or  a  new 
singer.  It  is  all  very  amusing,  but,  un- 
fortunately, too  true  as  a  revelation  of 
the  seamy  side  of  the  musical  profession. 
In  this  same  story  he  has  a  fling  at  the 
words  "  of  songs  and  operas  that  does 
not  in  the  least  exaggerate  the  absurdi- 
ties of  these  poetical  effusions.  Here  are 
the  words  of  a  song,  the  copyright  of 
which,  he  says  in  a  footnote,  is  for  sale 
for  twopence  halfpenny: 

"  Come  to  the  greenwood  tree, 
Come  where  the  dark  woods  be, 
Dearest,  O  come  with  me! 
Let  us  rove,  O  my  love!  " 

And  so  on  for  four  verses. 
Here  is  an  operatic  gem : 

"  Tink-a-tink,  tink-a-tink. 
By  the  light  of  the  star, 

72 


Literary  Men  and  Music. 

On  the  blue  river's  brink, 

I  heard  a  guitar 
On  the  blue  waters  clear, 

And  knew  by  its  music 
That  Selim  was  near." 

Some  fifty  years  ago,  one  of  the  most 
popular  forms  of  piano  music  was  the 
"  air  with  variations."  In  one  of  his 
novels  Thackeray  satirizes  this  fashion- 
able style  of  music  in  a  very  amusing 
way.  At  an  evening  party  the  governess 
is  requested  to  play  for  the  entertain- 
ment of  the  guests.  She  "  performs  "  a 
set  of  variations  on  the  air  of  a  song  that 
was  very  popular  some  half  a  century 
ago,  entitled  Sick  a  Gittiii  Up-stairs.  She 
begins  by"gittin'  up-stairs"  in  a  leisurely 
manner;  then  she  gets  up  with  a  run,  two 
steps  at  a  time;  then  she  crawls  up-stairs 
on  all  fours,  and  tumbles  down  to  the 
bottom;  then  begins  again  to  get  up 
furiously,  stopping  to  execute  a  pirouette 
73 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

on  every  step ;  then  dances  lightly  down, 
and  after  lingering  for  a  while  at  the 
bottom,  clears  the  stairs  at  a  bound, 
executes  a  wild  war-dance  on  the  top 
step,  ending  with  a  sudden  crash  from 
top  to  bottom,  where  she  lies  exhausted. 
It  is  a  pity  that  the  wit  that  was  keen 
enough  to  seize  on  the  absurdities  that 
belittle  the  art  was  not  sufficiently  en- 
lightened to  understand  and  appreciate 
all  that  lies  beyond  and  above. 

It  is  a  singular  circumstance  that  music 
is  the  only  art  of  which  people,  while 
rather  pluming  themselves  on  their  ignor- 
ance, will  speak  in  the  most  dogmatic 
way.  What  musician  has  not  heard 
some  sweeping  assertion  about  music  pre- 
faced v/ith  some  such  remark  as  this:  "  I 
don't  know  anything  at  all  about  music, 
but  I  know  what  good  music  is,  and  I 
think  so-and-so  "  ?  It  is  greatly  to  be 
desired  that  the  literary  world  might  be 
74 


Literary  Men  and  Music. 

brought  to  understand  that  there  is  as 
great  an  art  in  music  as  in  poetry,  or 
fiction,  or  any  other  department  of  litera- 
ture, one  that  makes  as  large  demands  on 
the  intellect;  and  that  hard  thinking  is 
as  necessary  an  element  in  composing  a 
great  symphony  as  in  writing  a  poem  or 
a  novel. 

The  people  at  large  should  be  taught 
that  there  are  as  many  grades  in  musician- 
ship as  in  any  other  profession;  above 
all,  that  a  distinction  should  be  made 
between  the  "  performer  "  and  the  com- 
poser. The  "  performer  "  bears  the 
same  relation  to  the  composer  that  the 
actor  bears  to  the  dramatist.  True,  in 
music  the  two  are  often  united,  but  not 
necessarily  so  by  any  means.  Unfortu- 
nately, the  publicity  of  the  great  perform- 
ers and  their  vagaries — too  often  childish 
and  absurd — have  given  the  prevailing 
tone  to  the  general  opinion  regarding 
75 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

music  and  musicians.  This  opinion  is 
further  strengthened  by  the  trashy  senti- 
mentalities written  about  music  and  musi- 
cians, and  by  the  impossible  creatures 
delineated  as  musicians  in  such  novels  as 
Consiielo  or  CJiarles  Auchester.  There  is 
only  one  great  novel  with  a  flesh-and- 
blood  musician  in  it, —  Y^\ Qsmtr  \n  Daniel 
Deronda.  The  result  is  that  a  Mozart  or  a 
Mendelssohn  are  put  in  the  same  category 
with  some  piano  gymnast,  who  helps  his 
notoriety  by  letting  his  hair  grow,  like 
Absalom,  or  by  playing  such  antics  be- 
fore an  audience  as  suggest  the  simian 
companion  of  the  street  musician. 

In  conclusion,  I  would  warn  musicians 
not  to  follow  the  example  of  the  literary 
world  towards  music,  by  adopting  a  like 
attitude  towards  literature.  Especially 
should  the  musician  study  poetry, — not 
merely  read  it,  but  study  its  laws  of  form 
and  construction.  He  will  get  many 
76 


Literary  Men  and  Music. 

unexpected  lights  on  his  own  art,  and  learn 
the  secret  of  how  "  good  music  "  should 
be  "married  to  immortal  verse."  Above 
all,  if  he  reads  intelligently,  he  will  find 
in  the  infinite  variety  of  literary  "  forms  " 
many  pregnant  hints  that  will  help  him 
in  the  development  of  his  own  art. 
Beethoven  is  reported  to  have  said  that 
he  never  composed  without  having  some 
great  poem  in  mind. 


77 


IV. 


SOME  CURIOSITIES  OF  MUSICAL  HISTORY. 


HAVING  treated  in  another  essay  of 
some  of  the  problems  of  musical 
history,  I  will  in  this  one  cull,  with  occa- 
sional comment,  some  of  the  curiosities 
that  this  history  offers.  The  chief  diffi- 
culty is  to  decide  when  and  where  to  be- 
gin, there  is  such  an  embarrassment  of 
riches.  But  as  it  always  gives  an  air  of 
learning  to  a  discourse  to  begin  with  the 
Greeks  and  Romans,  I  cannot  do  better 
than  follow  this  time-honored  precedent. 
These  "  curiosities"  are  not  only  enter- 
taining, but  much  instruction  may  be 
gathered  from  them  as  to  the  progress  of 
78 


Some  Curiosities  of  Musical  History. 

the  art  and  the  estimation  in  which  it 
and  its  practitioners  were  held.  Of 
Greek  music  we  know  absolutely  nothing, 
except  that  it  was  chiefly  vocal,  and  most 
likely  some  sort  of  a  chant.  Of  instru- 
mental music  they  must  have  known 
next  to  nothing,  if  we  may  base  an 
opinion  on  the  representations  of  their 
instruments,  which  seem  to  have  been 
few  in  number  and  of  feeble  powers. 
The  most  important  was  the  lyre,  the 
strings  of  which  varied  from  four  to 
fifteen,  although  eight  was  the  usual 
number.  The  lyre  furnishes  us  with  one 
curious  story.  A  certain  poet  (remem- 
ber that  the  poet  and  musician  were 
always  one  and  the  same  person  in 
Greece)  named  Eunomus  was  challenged 
to  a  trial  of  skill  by  another  poet,  Aris- 
tonus.  While  Eunomus  was  performing, 
a  string  of  his  lyre  broke,  and  immedi- 
ately a  grasshopper  which  had  been 
79 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

listening  in  rapt  attention  flew  up  and 
perched  upon  the  lyre,  and  every  time  the 
poet  required  the  note  of  the  broken 
string,  this  inspired  grasshopper  emitted 
a  "  skreigh  "  of  exactly  the  right  pitch. 
The  foolish  jury  awarded  Eunomus  the 
prize,  evidently  unfairly,  since  poet  versus 
poet  plus  grasshopper  was  no  part  of  the 
original  challenge.  Several  things  may 
be  learned  from  this  story :  first,  that  the 
Greeks  did  not  always  tell  the  truth; 
next,  that  their  taste  in  musical  sounds 
must  have  been  rather  peculiar.  That 
the  ancients  did  take  pleasure  in  the 
sound  of  this  little  insect  we  have  ample 
confirmation  in  the  well-known  fact  that 
they  kept  cicalas  —  a  kind  of  grasshopper 
— in  cages,  and  enjoyed  the  noise  they 
made. 

The  flute  was  held  in  great  estimation 
at  one  time,  and  contests  in  flute-playing 
were    held    at   the    Olympic    and    other 
80 


Some  Curiosities  of  Musical  History. 

games.  The  contestants  were  compelled 
by  law  to  wear  a  sort  of  leather  muzzle 
called  a  capistrum.  The  passing  of  this 
law  was  occasioned,  so  the  story  goes, 
by  the  following  circumstance:  a  favorite 
flute-player,  who  had  won  the  prize 
several  times,  was  determined  to  outdo 
all  his  previous  efforts,  and  he  blew  r,o 
hard  he  burst  a  hole  in  his  cheek.  The 
law  was  meant  to  prevent  the  recurrence 
of  such  a  distressing  accident.  Evidently 
Greek  taste  thought  loudness  an  element 
of  musical  beauty. 

Of  the  music  of  ancient  Rome  little  is 
known  except  that  it  was  borrowed  from 
Greece,  and  so  little  esteemed  was  the 
profession  of  music  that  it  was  practiced 
only  by  slaves  and  freedmen.  There 
existed  a  school  of  flute-players  (called 
tibiccnists,  from  /il?n7,  the  shin-bone),  the 
object  of  which  was  to  train  flute-players 
for  the   public  festivals,  but  alas  for  the 

6 

8x 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

credit  of  musicians!  these  flutists  were 
notoiious,  even  in  the  worst  period  of 
Roman  history,  for  their  drunkenness  and 
excesses  of  every  kind. 

These  flute-players  once  went  on  a 
strike  because  they  had  been  forbidden 
to  carry  on  their  carouses  in  the  temple 
of  Jupiter;  so  they  left  Rome  in  a  body 
and  went  to  the  neighboring  town  of 
Tibur,  just  before  some  great  festival  was 
to  be  celebrated.  The  Roman  ofificials 
tried  in  vain  to  persuade  them  to  return, 
when  the  magistrates  of  Tibur  came  to 
their  assistance  with  a  cunning  stratagem. 
Thev  gave  a  great  feast  to  which  they 
invited  the  flute-players.  Then  they 
plied  them  with  wine  until  they  were 
completely  stupefied,  when  they  were 
loaded  into  wagons,  taken  back  to  Rome, 
and  shut  up  safely  in  the  temple  of 
Jupiter  to  sleep  themselves  sober  again. 
They  were  so  furious  at  the  trick  played 
82 


Some  Curiosities  of  Musical  History. 

on  them,  that  to  placate  them  the 
authorities  not  only  gave  them  permis- 
sion to  feast  at  will  in  the  temple,  but 
gave  them  the  additional  privilege  of 
celebrating  their  return,  annually,  by  a 
tremendous  "  spree." 

Passing  on  into  Christian  times,  the 
first  utterances  we  meet  concerning  in- 
strumental music  are  fierce,  oft-repeated 
denunciations  from  the  Christian  fathers. 
Tertullian,  Lactantius,  and  Chrysostom 
denounced  the  flute,  harp,  and  cymbals 
as  instruments  of  deceit  that  seduced  the 
hearers  to  idolatry,  intemperance,  and  all 
manner  of  evils.  While  we  may  be  in- 
clined to  smile  at  the  severity  of  these 
denunciations  of  what  to  us  seems  a  very 
harmless  amusement,  we  must  not  forget 
that  there  were  excellent  reasons  for 
them,  as  the  use  of  these  instruments  was 
inclissolubly  associated  with  all  the  ex- 
cesses and  enormities  of  heathenism, 
83 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

which  in  this,  the  time  of  its  decadence, 
resorted  to  every  device  that  might  at- 
tract the  senses  and  aid  it  in  its  death 
struggle  with  Christianity. 

The  power  of  music  as  an  aid  to  re- 
h'gion  was  soon  recognized  by  the  new 
reh'gion,  and  the  work  of  reducing  it  to  a 
system  received  the  careful  attention  of 
a  long  succession  of  able  churchmen. 
For  many  years  this  music  was  exclu- 
sively vocal,  hence  it  was  that  vocal 
music  developed  a  high  degree  of  excel- 
lence, while  instrumental  music  led  a 
vagabond  existence  in  the  persons  of 
wandering  minstrels,  who  played  on 
various  strange  instruments  now  become 
obsolete.  In  the  course  of  time  the  con- 
dition of  these  minstrels  improved  some- 
what, and  they  were  received  with  delight 
in  the  noble's  castle  as  well  as  in  tlie 
farinhouse  or  humble  hostel.  Even  the 
monasteries  did  not  disdain  to  shelter 
84 


Some  Curiosities  of  Musical  History. 

them,  a.hd  to  enjoy  in  return  their  per- 
formance of  the  popular  music  of  the  day. 
So  popular  did  minstrelsy  become  that  it 
was  a  common  occurrence  for  wanderers 
to  claim  food  and  shelter  on  the  plea 
that  they  were  minstrels.  Two  mendi- 
cant friars  came  to  grief  on  an  occasion 
from  this  cause.  They  applied  for  a 
night's  lodging  at  a  Benedictine  monas- 
tery, were  well  entertained  by  the  monks, 
and  were  requested,  after  supper,  to  re- 
ward their  entertainers  with  some  music. 
Being  obliged  to  confess  their  inability, 
the  monks  were  so  angry  that  they  beat 
the  poor  friars  nearly  to  death,  and  thrust 
them  out  of  the  house. 

In  England  the  palmy  days  of  min- 
strelsy were  at  the  end  of  the  thirteenth 
and  the  beginning  of  the  fourteenth 
centuries.  At  the  marriage  of  Queen 
Eleanor's  daughter  to  the  Earl  of  Glouces- 
ter, four  hundred  and  twenty-six  minstrels 
85 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

were  employed,  and  a  sum  equal  'to  about 
six  thousand  dollars  was  distributed  among 
them.  The  minstrels  were  associated  in 
guilds;  the  chief  officer  of  the  guild  was 
called  the  king.  At  a  grand  court  cere- 
mony held  by  Edward  before  his  ex- 
pedition to  Scotland  that  resulted  so 
disastrously  at  Bannockburn,  there  were 
six  of  these  minstrel  kings  present,  and  so 
many  minstrels  that  about  twelve  thou- 
sand dollars  were  required  to  pay  them. 

The  number  of  these  wanderers  in- 
creased so  rapidly  that  it  became  neces- 
sary to  pass  a  law  that  not  more  than 
three  or  four  should  apply  on  the  same 
day  at  the  houses  of  "  prelates,  earls, 
and  barons  "  for  "  meate  and  drinke. " 

Among  the  numerous  instruments  of 
this    time,    a    small    bagpipe,    called    a 

cornemuse,"  was  a  great  favorite,  espe- 
cially with  pilgrims,  as  may  be  seen  in  the 
Canterbury  Tales.  A  curious  reason  for 
86 


Some  Curiosities  of  Musical  History. 

this  partiality  of  the  pilgrims  for  this 
instrument  is  set  forth  in  an  old  state 
paper,  as  follows:  "  If  one  of  the  pilgrims 
goeth  barefoot  and  striketh  his  foot  and 
hurteth  it  that  it  bleed,  it  is  well  that  his 
fellow  play  his  bagpipe  to  cheer  him  and 
drive  away  the  thought  of  his  hurt." 

Minstrelsy  declined  rapidly  from  the 
fourteenth  century,  yet  as  late  as  the  six- 
teenth the  minstrel  was  a  more  important 
personage  than  the  traveling  preacher. 
At  a  meeting  of  the  Stationers'  Com- 
pany in  1560,  they  employed  a  preacher 
to  whom  they  gave  six  shillings  and  two- 
pence, and  a  minstrel  to  whom  they  gave 
twelve  shillings.  Whether  it  be  that  the 
minstrels  have  wondrously  improved  or 
that  preachers  have  deteriorated  in  these 
latter  days,  certain  it  is  that  many  a 
"  minstrel  "  gets  more  for  a  single  even- 
ing's performance  than  many  a  preacher 
for  a  year's  hard  work. 
87 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

The  large  sums  paid  to  great  singers 
now  are  in  striking  contrast  to  the  pit- 
tances received  by  their  remote  predeces- 
sors, as  may  be  seen  by  the  following 
entries  in  the  privy  purse  accounts  of 
Henry  VII.  :  "  To  a  woman  that  singcth 
with  a  fiddell,  two  shillings."  "  To  the 
woman  that  sange  before  the  king  and 
queen,  six  shillings  and  threepence." 
Fancy  Eames  or  Melba  singing  before 
royalty  for  two  shillings,  or  even  six 
shillings  and  threepence! 

During  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.,  him- 
self a  musician  of  no  small  skill,  the  culti- 
vation of  instrumental  music  began  to 
grow  rapidly.  The  lute,  recorder,  vir- 
ginal, and  the  viols  became  the  amuse- 
ment of  people  of  the  highest  rank,  with 
the  natural  result  that  minstrelsy  rapidly 
declined  until  it  became  almost  extinct, 
to  be  revived  in  the  present  century  in 
the  pestilent  form  of  the  hand-organ  and 


Some  Curiosities  of  Musical  History. 

street-piano.  So  widespread  became  the 
practice  of  instrumental  music,  that  every 
trade  had  not  only  its  special  songs,  but 
its  special  instruments.  A  man  who 
tried  to  pass  himself  off  as  a  shoemaker 
was  detected  because  he  could  not  play 
either  the  flute  or  trumpet,  nor  could  he 
reckon  up  his  tools  in  rhyme.  In  a  book 
published  in  1622,  called  The  Compleat 
Gentleman,  the  author  says:  "  Though  I 
will  not  go  so  far  as  the  Italian  proverb 
that  says,  '  Whom  God  loves  not,  that 
man  loves  not  music,'  yet  I  am  verily 
persuaded  that  they  are  by  nature  very 
evil  disposed,  and  of  such  a  brutish 
stupidity  that  scarce  anything  else  that  is 
good  and  savoreth  of  virtue  is  to  be 
found  in  them," — a  sort  of  prose  version 
of  the  oft-quoted  lines  about  the  man 
who  is  not  moved  by  concord  of  sweet 
sounds  "  being  fit  for  "  treason,  strat- 
agem, and  spoils." 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

We  get  many  curious  glimpses  into  the 
domestic  life  of  our  ancestors  in  old  ac- 
count books,  such  as  were  kept  by  the 
stewards  of  great  men.  There  is  such  an 
account  book  extant  that  was  kept  by 
the  steward  of  the  fifth  Earl  of  Northum- 
berland in  the  sixteenth  century.  This 
earl  maintained  a  large  force  of  singers  to 
perform  his  daily  chapel  service ;  this 
force  consisted  of  a  dean,  an  organist, 
and  a  number  of  men  called  gentlemen 
of  the  chapel,  and  boys  called  children  of 
the  chapel.  The  dean  received  four 
pounds  a  year,  the  gentlemen  of  the 
chapel  from  four  to  six,  and  the  children 
of  the  chapel  twenty-five  shillings  each. 
Their  bill  of  fare  was  very  plain  and 
coarse:  for  breakfast,  a  loaf  of  bread,  a 
piece  of  boiled  beef,  and  a  gallon  of  ale; 
occasionally  salt  fish  was  substituted  for 
the  beef.  For  supper,  bread,  a  "  pot- 
tell  "  of  beer  (/.  e.,  two  quarts),  butter, 
90 


Some  Curiosities  of  Musical  History. 

and  salt  fish.  Poor  and  monotonous  as 
this  bill  of  fare  was,  their  master,  the 
powerful  earl,  did  not  fare  much  better. 
His  breakfast  was  the  same,  with  the 
addition  of  a  quart  of  wine,  and  occasion- 
ally some  fresh  herrings  or  sprats;  and 
for  dinner  some  boiled  mutton  bones  or  a 
chicken  were  added. 

Some  of  the  greatest  musical  curiosities 
are  to  be  found  in  the  writings  of  musi- 
cians themselves,  beginning  with  Pytha- 
goras and  his  dream  of  the  "  music  of 
the  spheres,"  a  fancy  that  has  exercised 
a  singular  fascination  on  the  minds  of 
poets  ever  since.  For  centuries  musicians 
wrangled  over  the  nature  of  intervals, 
their  arithmetical  ratios,  and  their  geo- 
metric analogies,  finding  strange  mysteries 
in  the  facts  that  the  proportions  of  one  to 
two,  or  four  to  five,  or  of  any  number 
to  any  other  number,  were  the'  same, 
whether  the  subject  were  sounds,  or 
91 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

numbers,  or  geometric  figures,  or  Solo- 
mon's temple,  or  the  solar  system.  One 
genius  even  found  a  strange  relation  be- 
tween the  ratios  of  the  consonances  and 
the  measurements  of  Noah's  Ark.  He 
communicated  his  wonderful  discovery 
to  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  whose  reply  was  a 
masterly  example  of  the  non-committal. 

The  echoes  of  this  wrangle  have  not 
yet  quite  died  away,  as  every  now  and 
again  some  enthusiast  proposes  a  "  sys- 
tem "  or  a  "  key-board  "  which  he  fondly 
believes  will  realize  that  impossibility, — 
exact  intonation.  The  writer,  while  ex- 
amining one  of  these  key-boards,  played 
some  ordinary  modulations,  such  as  are 
used  universally.  Their  effect  on  this 
instrument  was  literally  "  fiendish."  The 
comment  of  the  inventor  was:  "  Music 
has  no  business  to  go  out  of  one  key. 
Musicians  are  too  fond  of  getting  into 
keys  away  from  the  one  they  begin  in,— 
92 


Some  Curiosities  of  Musical  History. 

a  good  psalm  tunc  never  does."  I  could 
only  reply  that,  according  to  present  in- 
dications, there  was  little  likelihood  that 
the  "  music  of  the  future  "  would  be 
modeled  on  "  good  psalm  tunes." 

The  great  father  of  musical  darkness  in 
the  Middle  Ages  was  Boethius.  Lucidity 
of  style  was  seldom  a  characteristic  of 
mediaeval  writers;  like  Shelley's  Dem- 
ogorgon,  they  "  rayed  darkness  visible." 
Boethius  knew  nothing  about  music,  but 
did  not  think  himself  thereby  disqualified 
to  write  about  it.  The  result  was  a  pon- 
derous, pedantic  work  that  has  done  more 
to  befog  the  subject  than  the  combined 
w^orks  of  all  his  successors.  Here  is  a 
nice,  simple  explanation  of  the  ratios  of 
intervals:  "  There  are  five  kinds  of  pro- 
portions of  inequality,  as,  multiplex, 
superparticular,  su[)crpartient,  multiplex- 
supcrparticular  and  multiplex-superpar- 
tient.  Superpartient  relations  are  divided 
93 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

into  sesquialtera,  sesquitertra,  sesqui- 
quarta, "  etc.  All  of  which  is  nothing 
but  a  cumbrous  way  of  stating  by  how 
much  one  number  exceeds  another,  for 
example:  thirteen  is  three  times  and 
one  fourth  greater  than  four.  In  this 
mediaeval  language  they  would  say,  the 
proportion  between  thirteen  and  four  is 
multiplex-superparticular,  triple  sesqui- 
quarta.  Boethius  was  a  thoroughgoing 
Pythagorean  ;  he  says  that  "  the  theoretic 
branch  of  every  science  is  more  honorable 
than  the  practical.  He  is  the  only  true 
musician  who  professes  music,  not  in  the 
slavery  of  execution,  but  in  the  authority 
of  speculation."  In  these  latter  days  the 
"authority  of  speculation"  has  been  rather 
set  at  naught  in  musical  and  other  matters. 
The  pedantic  discussions  of  these 
mediaeval  authors  often  took  the  form 
of  labored  allegories.  A  writer  named 
Claude  Sebastian  wrote  one  to  set  forth 

94 


Some  Curiosities  of  Musical  History. 

the  relative  merits  and  demerits  of  plain 
song,  i.  e.,  music  without  time  or  rhythm, 
and  what  was  known  as  mensurate  music, 
i.  e.,  music  with  time.  He  figured  it  as 
a  war  between  two  kings,  brothers,  who 
reigned  over  the  adjacent  territories  of 
plain  song  and  mensurate  music.  "  The 
allies  of  the  king  of  plain  song  were  the 
pope,  the  cardinals,"  and,  strange  to  say, 

the  Lutheran  ministers."  "  Those  of 
the  rival  king  were  mode,  time,  and  pro- 
lation."  Prolation  was  a  complicated 
system  for  regulating  the  relative  values 
of  notes.  "  Each  army  was  composed 
of  notes,  and  the  shock  of  war  was  so 
great  that  some  of  the  notes  received 
black  eyes,"  an  allusion  to  the  introduc- 
tion of.  black  notes  in  place  of  the  old 
open  notes  called  "  evacuatai." 

Another  wiseacre  discourses  thus  on 
the  difference  between  the  v/hole  and 
half  tone:  "  The  tone  and  half  tone  may 
95 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

be  very  aptly  compared  to  Rachel  and 
Leah,  of  whom  it  is  related  in  the  book 
of  Genesis  that  they  built  up  the  house  of 
Israel,  for  as  Jacob  was  first  joined  in 
marriage  to  Leah,  thus  sound,  the  ele- 
ment of  music,  first  produces  a  tone  and 
then  a  semi-tone,  and  is  in  some  sense 
married  to  them.  The  semi-tone,  from 
which  the  symphony  of  all  music  is  prin- 
cipally generated,  as  it  tempers  the  rigor 
and  asperity  of  the  tones,  may  be  aptly 
assigned  to  Rachel,  who  chiefly  captivated 
the  heart  of  Jacob,  as  she  had  a  beautiful 
face  and  graceful  aspect.  The  tone  ren- 
dering a  rigid,  harsh  sound,  but  frequently 
presenting  itself,  agrees  with  Leah,  who 
was  bicar-cyed,  and  was  married  to  Jacob 
against  his  will";  and  so  on  with  page 
after  page  of  this  wearisome  stuff;  and 
this  was  a  text-book.  Truly  the  "Gradus 
ad  Parnassum  "  was  beset  with  thorns  in 
those  days. 

96 


Some  Curiosities  of  Musical  History. 

A  French  author  of  great  repute  begins 
his  Introduction  to  Universal  Harmony 
with  an  astrological  discussion  of  what 
should  be  the  horoscope  of  the  perfect 
musician.  He  casts  the  nativity  of  such 
a  person  calculated  for  the  latitude  of 
Paris,  and  discovers  that  the  unfortunate 
musician  would  enjoy  a  short  life  and 
meet  with  a  violent  death.  This  amazing 
Harmonie  Universelle  ends  a  treatise  on 
instruments  of  percussion  with  a  versifica- 
tion of  the  Athanasian  Creed !  and  the 
book  ends  with  an  essay  on  the  moral 
lessons  to  be  drawn  from  pure  mathe- 
matics. The  author  of  this  Harmonie, 
Mersenne,  was  a  friend  of  the  celebrated 
philosopher  Descartes.  Descartes  con- 
tributed to  the  book  a  discussion  of  the 
mathematical  proportions  of  musical  in- 
tervals. This  treatise  was  translated  and 
published  separately  in  England  by  a 
Lord  Brouncker,  with  the  following  queer 
97 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

title :  Renatiis  Descartes  Excellent  Com- 
pendium of  Music ;  With  Necessary  a7id 
yudicions  Animadversions  thereupon,  By  a 
Person  of  Ho7iour. 

A  favorite  form  of  instruction-book 
was  one  in  which  various  personified 
qualities  or  conceptions  were  introduced 
as  interlocutors.  "  Ignorance,"  "  Hu- 
manity," "  Studious  Desire,"  are  fre- 
quently made  to  discourse  together, 
sometimes  in  doggerel  rhyme,  like  the 
following  specimen : 

Humanity  : 

"  Prick-song  (/.  e.,   written  music)  may  not 
be  despised, 
For  therewith  God  is  well  plesed, 
Honored,  praised,  and  served 
In  the  church  oft-times  among." 

Ignorance  makes  a  reply  that  shows  he 
is  not  quite  prepared   to  accept  this  as 
true,    and,    by    the    way,    furnishes   the 
98 


Some  Curiosities  of  Musical  History. 

original  of  the  story  of  the  sailor's  defini- 
tion of  a  "  Hanthem." 

"  Is  God  well  plesed,  trowest  thou,  thereby  ? 
Nay,  nay,  for  there  is  no  reason  why, 
For  is  it  not  as  good  to  say  playnly 

'  Give  me  a  spade,' 
As  '  Give  me  a  spa-  ve-  va-  ve-  vade  '  ? 
But  if  thou  wilt  have  a  song  that  is  good, 
I  have  one  of  Robin  Hood, 

The  best  that  ever  was  made." 

Humanity  asks  him  to  sing  it,  and 
then,  craftily  making  it  his  text,  leads 
Ignorance  gently  to  the  feet  of  Studious 
Desire,  who  begins  his  enlightenment. 

Even  a  musician  like  Morley,  one  of 
the  great  madrigal  writers  of  Elizabeth's 
reign,  begins  an  instruction-book  with  a 
long,  weary  dialogue  between  Polymathes 
and  Philomathes,  in  which  the  least 
amount  of  information  is  conveyed  in  the 
greatest  number  of  words.  We  have  im- 
proved on  the  "  good  old  times  "  a  little, 
99 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

— at  least  we  do  not  now  write  our  in- 
struction-books in  that  way. 

A  very  shrewd  summing  up  of  the 
vocal  characteristics  of  various  European 
nationalities  is  given  by  a  writer  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  who  called  himself 
Ornithoparcus,  his  name  being  Vogel- 
sang. One  of  the  forms  that  pedantry 
took  was  the  Latinizing  of  proper  names, 
translating  them  when  possible,  if  not, 
giving  them  at  least  a  Latin  ending.  His 
verdict  was  that  "  The  English  do  carol, 
the  French  sing,  the  Italians  that  dwell 
about  the  courts  do  caper  with  their 
voices,  the  others  bark,  but  the  Germans 
— which  I  am  ashamed  to  utter — do  howl 
like  wolves."  Some  excellent  advice  to 
singers  may  be  found  in  his  writings  as 
to  the  pronunciation  of  vowels,  and  the 
proper  manner  of  emphasizing  their 
words.  He  was  evidently  a  keen,  shrewd 
observer,    who    kept    his    eyes    and   ears 

lOO 


Some  Curiosities  of  Musical  History. 

open  and   "  took   notes"    and  "  printed 
them." 

A  musical  folly  not  even  yet  quite 
extinct  is  the  composition  of  pieces  of 
instrumental  music  meant  to  describe 
actions  or  events,  or  other  things  that  lie 
entirely  outside  of  the  province  of  music. 
An  excellent  German  composer  wrote  an 
allemande  to  describe  how  Prince  Thurm 
crossed  the  Rhine,  in  which  the  dangers 
he  escaped  are  depicted  —  so  says  the 
author  —  by  "twenty-six  cataracts  of 
notes."  Another  composer,  Kuhnau, 
wrote  the  Combat  of  David  and  Goliath  ; 
another,  Buxteliude,  wrote  a  set  of  sonatas 
to  describe  the  nature  of  the  planets; 
and  countless  others  have  illustrated,  or 
imitated,  or  described  things  in  heaven 
and  earth  and  under  the  earth.  Even 
I^eethoven  wrote  a  pastoral  symphony, 
with  a  cuckoo  and  a  thunderstorm.  Ap- 
propriate to  all  such   imitative    music   is 

lOI 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

the  reply  of  King  Agesilaus  of  Sparta  to 
one  who  asked  him  to  hear  a  singer  who 
could  imitate  the  nightingale:  "  I  have 
heard  the  nightingale  herself." 

One  might  go  on  indefinitely  citing 
these  musical  curiosities,  for  the  supply  is 
almost  as  inexhaustible  as  are  the  foibles 
of  the  professors  of  the  art. 

Like  every  other  history,  that  of  music 
is  the  story  of  chance  discoveries,  willful 
blindness,  and  owlish  blundering.  It  is 
almost  inconceivable  why  it  should  have 
taken  centuries  to  discover  or  invent  a 
thing  so  simple  as  musical  notation. 
Even  after  the  invention  of  the  staff  they 
blundered  in  adapting  the  notes  to  it; 
after  they  got  the  notes,  it  took  years  to 
discover  the  simple  plan  of  making  each 
one  in  the  series  half  the  value  of  the  pre- 
ceding note.  He  was  a  genius  indeed  who 
first  put  a  dot  after  a  note,  and  did  away 
with  the  cumbrous   system   of  prolation 

102 


Some  Curiosities  of  Musical  History. 

and  tempus  perfectus  and  imperfectiis. 
Authority  has  ever  been  the  foe  to  pro- 
gress. Pythagoras,  in  the  persons  of  his 
expounders,  Ptolemy,  EucHd,  Boethius, 
aim  multus  aliis,  hung  Hke  a  dead  weight 
on  the  car  of  musical  progress  for  cen- 
turies. It  was  the  birth  of  the  modern 
spirit  of  free  inquiry  that  accelerated  the 
development  of  music,  as  of  all  the  other 
arts  and  sciences.  In  our  time  all  the 
possibilities  of  the  art  have  been  explored, 
not  without  furnishing  some  notable  con- 
tributions to  its  curiosities. 


103 


V. 


THE   TEUTONIC    ELEMENT   IN   MUSIC. 


THE  question,  To  what  is  the  "  na- 
tional "  character  of  music  owing  ? 
is  as  difficult  to  answer  as  it  is  interesting. 
This  "  nationalism  "  is  easily  recognized, 
but  the  moment  we  attempt  to  describe 
it,  it  eludes  our  grasp.  Nor  is  this  to  be 
wondered  at,  for  no  art  may  be  defined  in 
the  terms  of  another  art.  In  our  blunder- 
ing fashion  we  often  attempt  this  impos- 
sible feat,  but  always  fail  in  the  attempt. 
We  speak  of  the  "  poetry  "  of  a  symphony 
or  the  "  music  "  of  a  poem,  some  even 
call  a  painting  a  "  symphony  in  color  "  ; 
but  these  terms  convey  only  the  vaguest 
104 


The  Teutonic  Element  In  Music. 

metaphorical  meanings,  if  any;  hence  we 
may  well  despair  'of  finding  any  words 
which  will  enable  us  to  say  why  we 
recognize  one  melodic  and  rhythmic  suc- 
cession of  sounds  as  German,  another  as 
Italian,  another  as  French,  and  so  on. 

The  difficulty  is  increased  when  we  find 
that  during  the  period  of  the  old  classical 
school  the  "  art  music  "  exhibited  none 
of  these  national  traits;  a  madrigal,  or  a 
motet,  or  a  fugue  by  an  Italian  composer 
differed  in  no  respect  from  a  like  com- 
position by  a  German  or  Englishman  or 
Fleming.  This  nationalism,  upon  which 
so  much  of  the  character  of  modern  music 
depends,  seems  to  have  suddenly  made 
its  way  into  the  "  art  music,"  and  em- 
phasized its  presence  so  strongly  that 
henceforth  German,  Italian,  French,  and 
English  music  were  to  differ  as  widely  as, 
or  even  more  widely  than,  the  manners 
and  customs  of  these  several  peoples. 
105 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

In  searching  for  the  origin  of  this 
nationalism  we  must  turn  to  the  "  folk 
music  "  of  the  various  peoples,  the  popu- 
lar songs  and  dance  tunes,  —  natural 
growths,  innocent  of  musical  learning. 
These  may  furnish  some  hints  that  may 
aid  us  in  answering  the  question.  Folk 
music  exists  in  great  abundance  among 
nearly  all  peoples  who  have  lived  un- 
mixed long  enough  to  have  become  homo- 
geneous, and  thus  to  have  developed  what 
may  be  called  a  national  temperament. 
The  universality  of  this  folk  music  gives 
rise  to  two  very  interesting  questions: 
the  first,  already  hinted  at,  is,  Is  there 
any  genetic  connection  between  the  folk 
music  and  the  art  music  of  a  people  who 
have  developed  one  ?  Secondly,  why 
should  an  art  music  develop  among  one 
people  and  not  among  another,  when 
both  possess  an  equally  copious  and 
beautiful  stock  of  folk  music  ?  The  first 
1 06 


The  Teutonic  Element  in  Music. 

question  is  generally  answered  in  the 
affirmative,  but  the  well-known  fact 
stated  in  the  second  question  makes  this 
affirmation  at  least  doubtful.  The  object 
of  this  essay  is  to  find,  if  possible,  an 
answer  that  will  satisfy  the  conditions  of 
both  questions. 

It  is  universally  admitted  that  music 
gives  a  more  direct  revelation  of  emotion 
than  any  other  art,  especially  in  the 
natural,  unsophisticated  forms  it  assumes 
in  folk  music;  hence,  if  we  can  determine 
the  temperament  of  a  people, —  that  is, 
the  blending  of  moral,  intellectual,  and 
emotional  qualities  that  we  recognize  as 
national  or  racial, — we  may  get  an  inkling 
of  the  reasons  why  one  race  develops  an 
art  music  and  another  does  not.  We  will 
try  to  point  out  the  most  striking  charac- 
teristics of  the  popular  music  of  several 
peoples.  It  hardly  needs  to  be  said  that 
these  characterizations  must  be  taken 
107 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

with  the  limitations  to  which  all  sweeping 
generalizations  are  subject.  To  begin 
with  the  Italian,  the  popular  music  of 
Italy  is  characterized  by  smooth,  grace- 
ful melody,  by  intense  passion,  or  its 
opposite  extreme,  languor.  It  indicates 
a  temperament  in  which  quick,  strong 
passion  is  combined  with  a  keen  sense  of, 
and  admiration  for,  sensuous  beauty,  but 
when  not  moved  by  passion  it  is  too  lan- 
guid for  sustained  effort.  This  tempera- 
ment presents  just  the  right  conditions  to 
make  Italy  the  cradle  of  dramatic  music, 
with  its  rapid  variations  of  mood,  its  pas- 
sion and  action,  all  kept  within  the  limits 
of  the  beautiful  by  the  ever-flowing  stream 
of  exquisite  melody. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Frenchman, 
gifted  with  a  keen  appreciation  of  style, 
always  terse  and  delicate  in  his  work,  is 
as  epigrammatic  in  his  music  as  in  his 
literature;  and  it  is  impossible  that  a 
loS 


The  Teutonic  Element  in  Music. 

style  chiefly  characterized  by  neatness 
and  terseness  should  ever  develop  into  a 
large  art  form.  The  grace  and  self-poised 
perfectness  that  give  such  a  charm  to  a 
chanson  ox  2i  genre  composition  of  Couperin 
cannot  be  stretched  to  cover  a  symphony. 
Even  in  opera,  the  indigenous  French 
form  is  a  series  of  delicately  cut  and  pol- 
ished jewels,  strung  together  like  beads 
on  a  necklace. 

It  is  easier  to  characterize  German  folk 
music  by  negatives  than  by  positives.  It 
is  entirely  wanting  in  the  strenuous  pas- 
sion and  soft  melodiousness  of  the  Italian, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  the  neat  precision 
and  savoir-faire  of  the  French  on  the 
other.  It  is  quiet  and  self-contained, 
passion  is  tempered  by  reason,  imagina- 
tion is  controlled  by  reflection.  It  is  the 
reflex  of  the  temperament  of  a  sedate, 
thoughtful  race,  given  to  "  high  thinking 
and  plain  living  "  ;  a  people  to  whom  art 

Iu9 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

is  as  serious  a  matter  as  right  Hving, 
German  folk  music  is  entirely  lacking  in 
the  "  catchy  "  quality  of  the  brilliant 
French  or  sensuous  Italian  music,  but 
these  superficial  qualities  are  more  than 
compensated  for  by  a  purity  and  earnest- 
ness that  make  it  haunt  the  memory  long 
after  the  others  have  lost  their  charm. 

The  words  of  folk-songs  give  equally 
strong  indications  of  the  temperament  of 
their  authors;  a  very  large  proportion  of 
these  songs  are,  as  might  be  expected, 
love-songs.  But  the  differences  in  the 
expression  of  this  universal  passion  are 
very  striking  in  different  races.  In  the 
Italian  love-song  the  expression  alternates 
between  passionate  intensity  and  ecstatic 
languor.  In  the  French  it  is  gay,  with 
often  a  half-veiled  cynicism. 

The  Italian  is  divoto ;  he  abandons 
himself  to  his  passion :  the  Frenchman  is 
galant;  he  never  forgets  his  "good  form." 
no 


The  Teutonic  Element  in  Music. 

The  German  folk-song,  when  treating 
of  this  theme,  is  quiet  and  serious;  the 
expression  of  love  based  on  esteem,  the 
love  that  has  made  wife,  family,  and 
home  the  most  dearly  cherished  treasures 
of  every  branch  of  the  Teutonic  race.  In 
the  old  English  love-songs  a  sort  of  mix- 
ture of  the  French  and  German  character- 
istics is  to  be  found;  many  have  all  the 
purity  of  the  German,  added  to  which  is 
a  poetic  excellence  rarely  found  in  the 
old  German.  Many  are  as  decidedly 
French  in  their  half-cynical  treatment  of 
the  theme,  and  too  many  are  disfigured 
by  a  coarseness  that  is  very  rare  in  the 
German  folk-songs, — a  collection  of  nearly 
two  thousand,  ranging  from  the  twelfth 
to  the  seventeenth  century,  furnishing 
less  than  a  dozen  that  have  any  sugges- 
tion of  coarseness.  It  may  be  pushing 
our  speculation  too  far  to  attribute  the 
character  of  these  English  songs  to  the 
III 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

influence  of  the  French  admixture  that 
began  with  the  Norman  conquest  in  the 
tenth  century. 

There  is  a  class  of  old  English  songs 
that  has  no  counterpart  in  the  German, 
French,  or  Italian :  songs  of  a  broad, 
good-humored  joviality,  often  expressed 
in  very  coarse  fashion,  but  just  as  often 
with  a  humor  that  may  be  sought  for  in 
vain  in  the  songs  of  any  other  people; 
such,  for  example,  as  the  Leather  Battel 
or  Back  and  Side  go  Bare. 

The  most  valuable  plants  are  often  those 
of  slowest  growth.  Belgium,  Italy,  and 
England  made  great  advances  in  the  art  of 
music  before  Germany  discovered  that  it 
was  her  destiny  to  raise  it  to  the  highest 
pinnacle  it  has  attained,  or  ever  will  attain, 
German  composers  were  quite  content  for 
years  to  follow  the  paths  marked  out  by 
the  Italians.  From  Italy  they  got  all  the 
forms    which    they    were    eventually    to 

112 


The  Teutonic  Element  in  Music. 

make  their  own.  Thus,  the  opera  had  its 
birth  in  Italy,  and  the  form  given  to  it 
there  served  as  a  model  for  two  centuries; 
but  the  stamp  of  serious  meaning,  deeper 
far  than  mere  pleasure-giving,  was  added 
by  Germany,  notably  by  Gliick.  Mozart 
was  satisfied  with  this  form ;  even  Beet- 
hoven was  content  to  accept  it,  and  by 
the  force  of  his  transcendent  genius  make 
it,  in  his  solitary  opera,  the  purest,  lof- 
tiest expression  of  conjugal  love  that 
adorns  the  art  of  music,  "  the  bright, 
consummate  flower  "  of  those  qualities 
of  which  we  spoke,  as  the  most  striking 
characteristics  of  the  German  folk-song 
when  treating  of  the  passion  of  love. 

We  turn  now  to  instrumental  forms,  to 
see  if  they  will  yield  any  support  to  our 
argument.  These  forms  began,  as  is  well 
known,  as  simple  dance  tunes;  after  a 
while  they  were  strung  together  in  sets, 

to  which  the  name  of  "  suite  "  was  given. 

s 

"3 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

The  only  connection  between  the  various 
members  of  the  suite  was  identity  of  key. 

The  dance  tune  being  sharply  defined 
both  as  to  rhythm  and  melody,  we  might 
naturally  expect  the  French  genius  to 
excel  in  it.  This  expectation  is  met  in 
the  works  of  Couperin  ;  the  airy  grace  and 
delicacy  of  his  work  has  never  been  sur- 
passed;  his  suites  served  as  models  to  the 
infinitely  greater  Johann  Sebastian  Bach. 

More  elasticity  was  given  to  the  suite 
in  Italy;  the  most  illustrious  among  many 
great  writers  who  contributed  to  its  en- 
largement was  Scarlatti. 

The  two  great  German  contemporaries 
of  these  men,  Bach  and  Handel,  took  the 
works  of  Couperin  and  Scarlatti  as  their 
models.  Handel,  whose  genius  lay  in 
another  direction,  added  little  or  nothing 
to  the  "  form,"  although  his  genius  en- 
abled him  to  leave  many  beautiful  exam- 
ples of  it.  But  Bach,  whose  genius  was 
114 


The  Teutonic  Element  in  Music. 

decidedly  "  instrumental  "  in  its  bent, 
enlarged  the  "  form  "  and  gave  a  pro- 
founder  significance  to  the  music,  going 
so  far  as  to  anticipate,  in  some  degree, 
the  qualities  that  characterize  the  music 
of  Beethoven. 

To  Italy  the  world  owes  the  invention 
of  the  "  sonata,"  the  greatest  of  musical 
forms.  But  Italy  stopped  far  short  of 
developing  its  full  capabilities.  Germany 
took  it,  and  has  distinctly  made  it  her  own, 
through  the  works  of  Haydn,  Mozart, 
Beethoven, and  a  numerous  band  of  worthy 
successors  to  this  supreme  triumvirate. 

It  is  proverbially  easy  to  prophesy  after 
the  event,  but  it  almost  seems  that  a  phil- 
osophical observer  at  the  close  of  the  last 
century  might  have  said  that  Germany 
alone  was  fitted  by  natural  endowment 
to  develoj)  this  form,  for  the  following 
reasons :  An  extended  instrumental  com- 
position makes  an  equal  demand  on  the 
"5 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

intellectual  and  on  the  emotional  "nature. 
The  most  perfect  balance  must  be  main- 
tained between  them,  else,  on  the  one 
hand,  it  will  wither  into  dry  pedantry 
without  emotion,  or,  on  the  other,  fall 
into  a  maudlin  sentimentality  without 
the  bracing  effect  of  intellect. 

Patience  and  self-restraint  are  essentials 
to  the  construction  of  a  symphony:  pa- 
tience to  work  out  slowly  the  realization 
of  an  ideal;  self-restraint  to  avoid  pro- 
lixity and  the  temptation  to  seek  for 
effects  rather  than  for  ideas.  There  is 
no  more  strongly  pronounced  German 
trait  than  that  patience  which  will  plod 
contentedly  for  years,  sustained  by  the 
hope  of  realizing  some  cherished  ideal. 

In  the  quiet,  serious  character  of  the 
folk-songs  we  have  an' indication  of  this 
happy  mingling  of  intellect  and  emo- 
tion, patience  and  self-restraint,  unswerv- 
ing devotion  to  high  ideals,  that  has 
ii6 


The  Teutonic  Element  In  Music. 

made  the  symphony  the  supreme  expres- 
sion in  music  of  the  Teutonic  tempera- 
ment. No  doubt  it  was  a  surprise  to 
Madame  de  Stael  to  discover  how  much 
in  earnest  the  Germans  were  about  music, 
which  drew  from  her  her  celebrated  re- 
mark that  "  the  Germans  treat  music  like 
an  affair  of  the  state. "  It  is  just  here  that 
the  reason  for  their  superiority  is  found. 
Italy  treated  painting  as  an  "  affair  of  the 
state"  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  cen- 
turies, with  results  that  the  world  values 
more  and  more  with  every  passing  year. 

We  are  justified,  if  the  foregoing 
analysis  is  accepted,  in  saying  that  the 
part  played  by  the  Teutonic  element  in 
music  is  that  it  has  raised  it  from  the  low 
plane  of  sensuous  pleasure  and  given  it 
an  ethical  signification. 

It  has  been  the  privilege  of  one  branch 
of  the  Teutonic  family  to  make  known 
the  possibilities  of  this  art,  but  their  work 
117 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

has  become  the  possession  of  the  whole 
world.  Modern  conditions  are  making 
the  world  more  and  more  a  sodality  every 
day.  The  culture  of  each  people  is  be- 
coming the  culture  of  the  whole  race. 
Art,  in  its  highest  manifestations,  is  be- 
ginning to  be  recognized  as  not  of  any 
nationality,  but  as  based  on  principles 
that  are  universal  and  unchangeable. 
Hence,  composers  of  every  nationality 
have  learned  the  lesson  that  Germany 
has  taught,  and  are  striving  to  follow  the 
same  path  to  the  same  goal.  Much  has 
been  said  of  late  about  the  founding  of 
national  schools  of  music  on  the  folk- 
songs of  a  people,  but  there  is  surely 
some  error  here.  It  is  mistaking  a  symp- 
tom for  a  cause.  The  symphony  did  not 
grow  out  of  the  German  folk-song,  but 
the  German  folk-song  was  an  indication 
of  the  temperament  that  was  necessary  to 
the  production  of  the  symphony. 
ii8 


The  Teutonic  Element  in  Music. 

It  is  too  late  iti  the  history  of  the  world 
for  any  indigenous  art  of  music  to  grow 
up,  unless  it  should  take  place  among  a 
people  shut  out  completely  from  the  rest 
of  humanity  and  ignorant  of  all  that  has 
been  done  in  the  art.  Nor  can  any  one 
by  "  taking  thought"  build  up  a  school 
of  music.  All  music  from  henceforth 
must  take  into  account  what  has  already 
been  done  in  the  art,  and  advance,  if  ad- 
vance be  possible,  by  building  on  it.  The 
folk-song  has  as  little  to  do  with  the 
noble  melody  of  Mozart  or  Beethoven  as 
the  pretty  prattle  of  an  intelligent  child 
with  the  weighty  sayings  of  the  same 
child  when  grown  into  a  world-wise  poet. 

If  we  turn  our  attention  to  the  case  of 
those  peoples  who,  though  possessed  of 
an  abundant  and  beautiful  stock  of  folk- 
songs, have  never  developed  a  great  "  art 
music,"  we  shall  find  further  confirmation 
of  the  theory  that  national  temperament 
119 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

is  the  chief  factor  in  producing  this  result. 
The  two  most  notable  instances  are  the 
Celts  and  the  lowland  Scotch.  Surprise 
has  often  been  expressed  at  the  fact  that 
no  Celtic  people  has  developed  an  "  art 
music,"  although  no  people  display  a 
more  passionate  fondness  for  music  or 
possess  a  more  beautiful  folk  music.  We 
may  find  an  explanation  of  this  fact  in 
the  impulsive,  mercurial  temperament  of 
the  Celt,  easily  moved,  but  never  long 
constant  to  one  emotion,  and.  utterly 
wanting  in  the  patience  necessary  for 
long-continued  effort.  This  is  just  the 
temperament  for  the  production  of  melo- 
dies covering  the  widest  range  of  emotion, 
unmatchable  for  beauty,  or  pathos,  or 
gayety,  or  ardor, — melodies  on  which  the 
.constraint  of  "  form  "  would  act  like 
frost  on  summer  flowers. 

Even  more   remarkable   is  the  case  of 
the  lowland  Scotch.    With  a  temperament 
1 20 


The  Teutonic  Element  in  Music. 

diametrically  opposite  to  that  of  the 
Celt,  and  a  folk  music  quite  equal  to  that 
of  the  Celt,  one  would  think  that  they 
presented  ideal  conditions  for  the  de- 
velopment of  "  art  music." 

But  the  Scotch  genius  is  essentially 
lyric.  The  Scotch  are  a  people  of  in- 
tense feeling,  but  reticent  and  self- 
restrained  above  all  other  peoples.  When 
intense  feeling  joined  with  intense  self- 
restraint  must  overflow,  its  natural  outlet 
is  the  short  lyric,  and  the  demand  for  an 
outlet  once  met,  the  habitual  reticence  re- 
asserts itself,  putting  a  full  stop  to  any  de- 
sire to  continue  at  length  the  expression 
of  the  emotion  that  caused  the  outburst. 

It  is  probable  that  to  this  invincible 
reticence  is  owing  the  half-enigmatic  char- 
acter of  the  words  of  many  Scotch  songs; 
they  hint  obscurely  at  feelings  and  emo- 
tions that  no  true-bred  Scotchman  would 
for  the  world  express  openly. 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

These  speculations  may  throw  some 
light  on  the  question,  much  discussed  of 
late,  concerning  the  coining  into  exist- 
ence of  an  American  school  of  music, 
which  must  be  based,  according  to  one 
high  authority,  on  the  "  plantation  melo- 
dies." But  the  notorious  fact  that  many 
peoples  have  possessed  a  copious  stock 
of  beautiful  folk  music  for  centuries, 
yet  have  never  developed  an  "art  music," 
is  a  convincing  proof  that  the  rise  of  the 
"  art  "  must  be  attributed  to  other  causes. 
The  great  German  composers  have  shown 
how  themes  must  be  treated  to  produce 
great  works  of  art;  to  these  conditions  all 
great  works  must  conform,  until  some 
better  form  is  discovered. 

The  themes  of  such  a  work  may  be 
Slavic,  or  Scandinavian,  or  "  plantation 
melodies,"  the  only  result  of  which  will 
be  to  give  a  sort  of  quasi-local  color  to 
the  composition, — a  thing  which   is   not 

122 


The  Teutonic  Element  in  Music. 

only  non-essential,  but  which  drags  it 
down  to  the  "  particular  "  instead  of  lift- 
ing it  into  that  high  region,  the  home  of 
all  great  art,  where  all  "  particulars"  and 
"  accidents  "  are  merged  in  the  universal. 
The  Tempest  and  the  Fifth  Symphony  are 
true  to  human  nature  always  and  every- 
where. Pickzvick  Papers  and  a  Grieg 
Norzvcgian  Rhapsody  (excellent  things, 
each  in  its  own  way)  are  true  to  but  a 
limited  fraction  of  human  nature,  Dvor- 
ak's American  Symphony  is  in  no  sense  a 
development  from  indigenous  American 
music.  It  is  a  symphony  constructed  in 
accord  with  the  well-known  plan  that 
owes  its  existence  to  the  Teutonic  ele- 
ment in  music.  The  only  result  attained 
by  the  choice  he  has  made  of  its  themes 
is  that  it  sounds  like  the  apotheosis  of  a 

minstrel  show." 

In  conclusion,  Celt,  Scot,  Italian, 
Frenchman,  Englishman,  have  all  learnt 
123 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

the  lesson  that  Germany  has  taught;  and 
all  have  done,  and  are  doing,  excellent 
work  in  the  highest  branches  of  the  art. 
This  excellence  is  in  exact  proportion  to 
the  fidelity  with  which  they  follow  the 
lines  laid  down  by  the  Teutonic  genius 
that  first  raised  music  to  a  position  side 
by  side  with  the  great  sister  arts  of  poetry 
and  painting. 


124 


VI. 


MODERN   TENDENCIES   IN   MUSIC. 

THAT  law  of  constant  change  which 
dominates  all  mundane  affairs,  keep- 
ing them  from  stagnation,  rules  with 
equal  force  in  the  realm  of  art,  and  has 
been  especially  busy  in  the  art  of  music 
during  the  last  hundred  years.  For  six- 
teen centuries  the  process  of  change  was 
very  slow,  but  it  has  worked  with  ever- 
increasing  celerity  since  the  establishment 
of  the  modern  major  and  minor  keys  and 
the  evolution  of  the  laws  of  harmonic 
combination  and  succession.  The  ap- 
pearance of  each  new  composer  has  been 
the  sienal  for  a  chorus  of  dissent   from 


125 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

the  purists  of  his  day,  loudly  condemna- 
tory of  his  innovations  and  disregard  of 
their  rules.  One  of  the  earliest  of  these 
innovators  was  he  who  first  sounded  the 
seventh  with  the  dominant  chord,  with- 
out preparation,  and  roundly  abused  he 
was  for  his  temerity.  When  Gliick  arose 
and  laid  down  what  to  us  seem  self-evi- 
dent principles  for  the  construction  of 
dramatic  music,  the  best  that  the  great 
Handel  could  say  of  him  was,  "  He 
knows  no  more  of  counterpoint  as  does 
mine  cook."  Strange  to  say,  Handel's 
operas  are  forgotten,  but  Gliick's  are  still 
occasionally  heard.  Sarti,  a  musician  un- 
known except  by  name  to  modern  ears, 
proved — to  his  own  satisfaction  at  least 
— that  Mozart  could  not  write  music; 
and  Zelter,  the  friend  of  Goethe,  and 
teacher  of  Mendelssohn,  spoke  of  Beet- 
hoven's music  as  "  aberrations  and  ex- 
travagancies."     But  genius,  like  wisdom, 

X26 


Modern  Tendencies  in  Music. 

is  "  justified  of  her  children."  Among 
wild,  gregarious  animals  there  exists  an 
instinct  which  makes  them  put  to  death 
any  member  of  the  herd  that  is  wounded. 
Among  civilized  men  a  reverse  instinct 
prevails,  which  makes  them  attack  with 
ferocity  any  one  who  by  natural  force  is 
in  any  degree  elevated  above  themselves. 
Especially  do  these  self-constituted  cura- 
tors of  the  "  arts  "  resent  any  iconoclasm 
towards  the  idols  that  they  worship. 
They  are  ever  ready  to  cry,  "  Great  is 
Diana  of  the  Ephesians!  "  unwitting  that 
the  reign  of  Diana  is  at  an  end. 

A  great  change  in  the  art  of  music  took 
place  in  the  last  century,  when  the  old 
classic  contrapuntal  school  gave  way  be- 
fore the  new,  modern,  harmonic  school. 
Signs  of  a  coming  change  had  appeared 
in  many  places  at  various  times,  but  the 
rise  of  Bach  and  Handel  may  conveniently 
be  taken  as  the  point  of  departure  of 
127 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

modern  music.  The  term  "  romantic  " 
has  been  used  to  distinguish  the  modern 
from  the  ancient  music.  It  is  a  difficult 
term  to  define;  perhaps  the  nearest  we 
can  come  to  a  definition  is  that  it  is  music 
meant  to  vican  something. 

To  the  old  contrapuntist,  expression 
was  an  unknown  quantity.  The  ' '  words  " 
he  set  were  merely  an  excuse  for  an 
elaborate  web  of  notes,  in  which  imita- 
tion, canon,  inversion,  and  all  the  arti- 
fices of  counterpoint  were  the  chief  things 
to  be  displayed.  In  these  two  great 
landmarks  between  the  old  and  the  new 
— Bach  and  Handel  —  we  may  naturally 
expect  to  find  both  these  kinds  of  music, 
and  we  do.  For  example,  in  the  opening 
chorus  in  T/ie  Messiah,  "  And  the  glory 
of  the  Lord,"  the  reiteration  of  one  note 
to  the  words,  "  For  the  mouth  of  the 
Lord  hath  spoken  it,"  while  all  the  other 
parts  are  in  motion,  produces  a  powerful 
128 


Modern  Tendencies  in  Music. 

impression  of  the  immutability  of  the 
Divine  word.  The  same  effect,  in  even 
greater  degree,  is  produced  in  the  "  Hal- 
lelujah chorus  "  by  the  sustained  notes, 
each  a  degree  higher  than  the  last,  to  the 
words,  "  King  of  kings.  Lord  of  lords," 
soaring  over  the  tumultuous  repetitions 
of  "  for  ever  and  ever." 

In  music  like  this  the  imagination  is 
set  on  fire,  and  Handel  himself  said  of 
this  chorus,  "  I  seemed  to  see  Heaven 
open  and  hear  the  shouting  of  the  great 
multitude  no  man  can  number."  This, 
then,  is  the  romantic  quality.  It  appeals 
to  the  imagination  and  quickens  the  emo- 
tions, and  the  meaning  of  which  music  is 
capable  is  brought  home  to  us. 

Turn  now  to  the  next  chorus,  "  And 
he  shall  purify  the  sons  of  Levi,"  a 
masterly  fugue,  but  we  listen  unmoved; 
there  is  nothing  in  the  words  to  make 
any  demand  on  the  expressive  power  of 

9 

129 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

music,  consequently  the  music  never  rises 
to  the  height  of  touching  the  imagination. 

Bach  had  little  of  the  dramatic  feeling 
that  is  so  strongly  characteristic  of  Han- 
del. Yet  he  occasionally  flashes  out  with 
startling  effect.  In  his  great  Passion 
according  to  St.  Matthew  there  is  a 
striking  example  in  the  chorus  that  fol- 
lows the  betrayal  of  Christ.  The  indig- 
nant wonder  of  the  chorus  is  expressed 
in  the  words,  "  Why  are  the  thunders 
and  lightnings  restrained  in  the  clouds  ?  " 
This  ends  on  the  chord  of  D  major;  then, 
after  a  pause,  the  chorus  begins  again  on 
the  chord  of  F*  major,  with  the  words, 
"  Throw  open  thy  fiery  deeps,  O  Hell, 
and  whelm  in  sudden  wrath  the  betrayer." 
The  effect  of  this  pause  and  change  of 
key  is  appalling. 

The  next  great  composer  to  arise  was 
Haydn.  He  gave  a  new  direction  to 
musical  expression  by  making  it  imitative. 
130 


Modern  Tendencies  in  Music. 

Not  satisfied  by  making  it  appeal  to  the 
imagination,  he  made  it  appeal  to  that 
lower  faculty,  the  fancy,  or,  to  put  it  in 
another  way,  the  appeal  was  not  abstract, 
but  concrete.  He  would  make  you  see  the 
sun  rise;  if  his  text  mentions  the  bleat- 
ing of  flocks  or  the  hum  of  insects,  you 
must  hear  the  bleating  and  the  humming. 
True,  Handel  tried  this  trick  long  before, 
but  he  did  it  clumsily,  whereas  Haydn 
did  it  so  deftly,  and  with  such  beautiful 
music  that,  though  one  cannot  forbear 
smiling  when  listening,  it  is  impossible  to 
wish  it  otherwise  than  as  it  is.  That  this 
imitative  music  is  a  false  light  in  the  art 
there  can  be  no  doubt.  It  bears  the  same 
relation  to  genuine  music  that  waxworks 
bear  to  sculpture,  or  the  biograph  to  a 
great  painting. 

The  next  great  master,   Mozart,   care- 
fully   avoided    the     puerilities    that    de- 
lighted his   predecessor,    and   sought    for 
131 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

purity  and  beauty,  presided  over  by  a 
calmness  like  that  of  Olympus.  These 
qualities  he  never  for  a  moment  lost 
sight  of,  even  in  the  most  intense  dra- 
matic situations. 

The  next  and  greatest  of  all,  Beethoven, 
threw  aside  as  useless  lumber  everything 
that  could  not  help  to  the  expression  of 
his  profound  musical  thought.  His  is 
the  only  music  that  seems  to  come  direct 
from  a  warm,  passionate,  human  heart, 
on  fire  with  the  noblest  ideals. 

It  has  been  said  that  he  had  no  regard 
for,  and  little  knowledge  of,  the  contra- 
puntal art.  This  may  be  true  as  to  such  of 
its  dry  pedantries  as  Albrechtberger,  his 
teacher,  delighted  in.  But  if  those  who 
make  this  charge  will  examine  the  first 
movement  of  the  great  quartet  in  C  * 
minor,  they  will  find  that  Beethoven 
could  be  contrapuntal  when  it  suited  him 
to  use  counterpoint  as  a  means  for  the 
132 


Modern  Tendencies  in  Music. 

expression  of  an  idea.  As  the  old  classic 
period  culminated  in  Palestrina,  so  did 
the  modern  classic  in  Beethoven. 

The  eminence  of  Haydn  as  a  writer  of 
descriptive  music  justifies  his  being  called 
the  typical  writer  of  this  class,  while 
Beethoven  may  be  regarded  as  typical  of 
the  ideal  school.  These  two  composers, 
then,  may  be  regarded  as  the  sources 
from  which  the  modern  schools  of  music 
have  sprung. 

The  simple,  frankly  imitative  music  of 
Haj^dn  has  gradually  broadened  into  the 

program  music"  of  to-day;  the  ideal 
school  of  Beethoven  into  the  mysterious, 
formless,  and  generally  cacophonous  pro- 
ductions of  the  extreme  modern  school, 
which  sets  at  defiance  every  rule  as  to 
key,  progression,  and  form. 

As  soon  as  the  contrapuntal  system 
was  abandoned,  and  music  was  con- 
structed on  the  harmonic  system,  theorists 
133 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

at  once  began  to  systematize  the  pos- 
sible combinations  and  successions,  and 
thus  the  art  of  harmony  was  evolved, 
still  much  hampered  by  the  traditional 
rules  of  the  old  school.  But  every  new 
composer  of  eminence  extended  the 
boundaries  of  these  combinations  and 
progressions,  with  the  result  that  the 
practice  of  composers  has  always  been  in 
advance  of  the  rules  laid  down  by  the 
theorists.  To  such  lengths  has  this 
emancipation  been  carried  that  composers 
now  disregard  such  universally  accepted 
rules  as  tliose  forbidding  parallel  fifths 
and  octaves,  those  governing  the  move- 
ment of  dissonances,  and  the  use  of 
second  inversions,  claiming  that  only  thus 
can  they  express  the  wondrous  depths  of 
their  musical  emotions. 

Protest  against  such  license  is  unavail- 
ing, because  the  so-called  laws  of  music 
are  simply  laws  of  taste,  and  taste  is  one 
134 


Modern  Tendencies  in  Music. 

of  the  most  mutable  things  in  the  world. 
The  teacher  of  composition  is  often 
driven  to  say,  "  Well,  the  laws  of  com- 
position are  so-and-so,  but  you  may  break 
every  one  of  them  and  find  plenty  of 
authorities  to  support  you."  Thus  we 
may  say  that  one  of  the  most  marked  of 
modern  tendencies  is  harmonic  freedom. 

To  the  old  classic  school,  melody  was  of 
little  or  no  importance,  but  with  the  rise 
of  the  modern  classic  school  there  came 
a  wonderful  outburst  of  noble,  beautiful 
melody  that  has  not  even  yet  quite  died 
away.  Handel,  Bach,  Haydn,  Mozart, 
Beethoven,  and  lesser  men  have  con- 
tributed to  this  imperishable  wealth  of 
melody.  Foremost  stands  Beethoven, 
who  possessed  some  magic  power  over 
the  diatonic  scale  that  made  it  yield  such 
melodies  as  no  other  composer  has  ex- 
tracted from  it. 

But  the  modern  tendency  is  to  discard 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

melody;  an  ultra-modern  composer  has  a 
horror  of  making  a  "  tune."  His  feel- 
ings are  so  "  intense"  that  nothing  but 
vague  leaps,  accompanied  by  dissonant 
chords,  may  do  them  justice;  there- 
fore, another  modern  tendency  is  to  be 
unmelodious. 

Among  the  discoveries  made  at  the  - 
dawn  of  modern  music,  one  of  the  most 
important  was  that  in  long  compositions 
a  certain  order  in  the  succession  of  keys 
and  themes  was  productive  of  a  more 
satisfying  effect  than  any  other.  To  this 
order  the  name  of  "  form  "  is  given. 
From  Haydn  to  Mendelssohn  these 
**  forms  "  were  found  sufficient  for  the 
expression  of  the  most  varied  content. 
But  the  new  generation  regards  "  form  " 
as  bondage,  and  makes  keys  and  themes 
succeed  one  another  in  the  most  capri- 
cious fashion,  so  that  another  modern 
tendency  is  towards  formlessness. 
136 


Modern  Tendencies  in  Music. 

But,  although  we  are  losing  some  things 
that  many  still  think  are  essentials  of 
good  music,  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that 
there  has  been  no  gain  to  offset  the  loss. 
The  emancipation  of  harmony,  despite 
the  extravagances  into  which  some  com- 
posers have  fallen,  is  a  great  gain,  and  it 
is  quite  possible  that  from  the  present 
formlessness  some  new  and  more  beauti- 
ful forms  may  be  evolved. 

The  most  marked  of  modern  tendencies 
is  to  be  found  in  the  opera.  Opera  has 
passed  rapidly  through  several  well- 
marked  revolutions.  It  began  with  the 
recitative,  and  originated  in  an  attempt 
to  revive  what  was  believed  to  be  the 
ancient  Greek  manner  of  performing  a 
play.  This  soon  gave  way  to  the  intro- 
duction of  "  airs  "  or  songs,  which,  in 
accordance  with  the  taste  of  the  time, 
were  wonders  of  elaborate  floridity. 
Little  attention  was  given  to  the 
137 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

"  words,"  the  same  stories,  ahvays  taken 
from  classic  history  or  mythology,  being 
used  over  and  over  again.  The  singer 
and  the  music  were  everything.  So  little 
attention  was  given  to  appropriate  scenery 
or  costume  that  Caesar  and  Antony, 
Alexander  and  Darius,  used  to  appear  on 
the  stage  in  the  full-bottomed  wigs  and 
broad-skirted  coats  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  Then  Gliick  came  and  laid 
down  the  principle  that  it  was  the  busi- 
ness of  the  opera  writer  to  express  by 
every  means  in  his  power  the  meaning  of 
the  text  and  the  dramatic  situation.  Of 
course  he  had  to  fight  for  it,  but  victory 
soon  perched  on  his  banners,  and  the  old 
Handelian  opera  was  dead,  never  to  be 
revived  again.  But  there  grew  out  of  it 
another  form,  which  the  genius  of  Mozart 
has  made  immortal,  and  which,  in  spite 
of  the  modern  school,  still  holds  its  place 
on  the  stage,  and  is  even  yet  capable  of 
138 


Modern  Tendencies  in  Music. 

producing  works  of  great  and  permanent 
interest,  such,  for  example,  as  Gounod's 
Faust,  which  is  a  slightly  modified  form 
of  Italian  opera. 

The  principle  enunciated  by  Gliick  has 
been  adopted  by  the  modern  school  and 
pushed  to  its  farthest  limit ;  the  modern 
writers  have  also  reverted  to  the  practice 
of  the  pioneers  of  the  opera,  having  dis- 
carded melody  and  taken  to  continuous 
recitative.  They  have  also  revived  an 
old  artifice  in  the  adoption  of  what  might 
be  called   musical  catchwords,   viz.,    the 

leit  motiv,"  to  give  it  the  name  by 
which  it  is  best  known. 

The  time  has  not  yet  come  when  we 
can  say  that  the  modern  opera  is  a  dis- 
tinct advance  on  its  predecessor.  Many 
are  convinced  that  it  is.  Many  have 
exactly  the  reverse  conviction,  and  can 
give  some  very  sound  reasons  for  it.  We 
may  at  least  say  that  to  give  up  melody 
139 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

for  recitative  and  form  for  vagueness, 
looks  more  like  atavism  than  progressive 
evolution. 

There  has,  without  doubt,  been  a  de- 
terioration in  musical  taste  in  some  re- 
spects during  the  last  fifty  years,  but,  on 
the  other  hand,  there  has  also  been  a 
widespread  and  ever-growing  interest  in 
the  cultivation  of  the  best  class  of  music. 
This  deterioration  is  owing,  in  great  de- 
gree, to  the  facility  with  which  bad  music 
may  be  written  on  the  harmonic  basis. 
Doubtless  there  were  many  writers  of 
bad  music  in  the  old  contrapuntal  times, 
but  as  it  is  much  more  difficult  to  write 
contrapuntally  than  harmonically  they 
were  doubtless  not  so  numerous  as  they 
are  at  present,  when  every  one  who 
can  invent  or  "  convey  "  a  little  melody, 
and  accompany  it  with  the  tonic,  domin- 
ant, and  subdominant  chords,  is  dubbed  a 
composer. 

140 


Modern  Tendencies  in  Music. 

When  the  great  art  of  modern  music 
came  into  existence  it  was  a  luxury  within 
the  reach  of  the  wealthy  and  cultivated 
classes  exclusively,  but  as  time  passed  on 
it  spread  gradually  among  the  people  at 
large,  who  rapidly  learned  to  appreciate 
it,  and  who  are  its  most  interested  patrons 
at  the  present  time.  So  that  one  of  the 
most  striking  of  modern  tendencies  has 
been  the  diffusion  of  good  music  among 
the  people,  brought  about  by  the  forma- 
tion of  choral  and  other  musical  organiza- 
tions, and  in  very  great  degree  by  the 
generous  liberality,  in  our  country,  of 
men  of  large  means,  who  have  made  it 
possible  for  every  one  to  hear  the  greatest 
of  instrumental  compositions,  performed 
by  orchestras  of  unsurpassable  excellence. 

But  there  are  two  factors  of  more  im- 
portance than  any  I  have  mentioned  that 
make  for  the  spread  of  sound  musical 
culture  in  our  times.  Already  productive 
141 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

of  great  results,  they  give  promise  of 
producing  still  more  important  results  in 
the  immediate  future.  First  of  these  I 
place  the  teaching  of  music  in  the  schools, 
public  and  private,  all  over  the  land.  To 
those  of  us  who  are  old  enough  to  re- 
member the  crude,  primitive  methods 
that  were  followed  thirty  or  forty  years 
ago,  and  compare  them  with  the  well- 
thought-out  systems  of  the  present  day, 
the  change  seems  little  short  of  mir- 
aculous. The  w^ork,  for  which  the  un- 
taught "  singing-school  teacher  "  was 
thought  sufificient,  has  been  taken  up  by 
trained  musicians  and  educators  who 
have  devoted  years  of  thought  to  the 
elaboration  of  what  seem  to  be  nearly 
perfect  systems  of  instruction,  w^iich 
must  result  in  laying  deep,  broad  founda- 
tions on  which  the  musical  future  of 
America  will  rest.  Of  equal  importance 
is  the  establishment,  in  all  the  principal 
142 


Modern  Tendencies  in  Music. 

cities,  of  music  schools  and  conservatories 
for  special  training  in  the  art.  It  is  im- 
possible to  calculate  the  effect  these  have 
had  in  elevating  the  standards  of  musical 
taste.  Being  equipped  with  large  corps  of 
trained  teachers,  following  a  thoroughly 
systematized  course  of  instruction,  and 
admitting  only  the  highest  grade  of  music 
in  their  classrooms,  there  is  no  agency 
doing  more  excellent  work  in  spreading 
genuine  musical  culture. 

In  conclusion,  it  would  appear  that 
owing  to  the  various  agencies  mentioned, 
the  most  noticeable  of  the  modern  ten- 
dencies is  to  a  wider  diffusion  of  music  of 
the  highest  class.  Many  thoughtful  ob- 
servers hold  the  opinion  that  the  great 
productive  periods  in  all  the  arts  have 
passed,  never  to  return ;  consequently, 
there  remains  for  us  who  have  fallen  on 
these  latter  days  no  new  territory  to 
conquer,  but  only  to  occupy  thoroughly 
143 


Highways  and  Byways  of  Music. 

the  territories  won  by  the  giants  of  old, 
and  bequeathed  to  us  as  a  precious  legacy. 
Fortunately,  there  is  still  room  for  us  to 
work,  even  though  we  cannot  write  music 
like  Mozart  or  Beethoven,  or  paint  like 
Angelo  and  Raphael,  or  write  poetry  like 
Shakespeare  and  Milton.  And  no  more 
useful  work  can  be  found  than  that  of  the 
teacher  whose  labors  make  the  art  that 
was  at  one  time  the  luxury  of  the  wealthy 
and  high-placed  the  common  property  of 
rich  and  poor  alike. 


144 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles     NOV    2  6  1984 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


UCLA  -  Music  Library 

ML  60  C59 

:i  !!||||i  II  in  II I  jii  II  Mil 


L  006  959  830  8 


ML 
60 
C59 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA      000  075  023    2 


ililllll 


ill!  I 
11 


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